


Alternia, Reborn

by avulle



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AKA the crew fucks alternia, Because man, Gen, Kinda?, Post Game AU, all the ancestors?, amirite, but a little bit for each of them, fuck alternia, not for super long
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2019-11-08 04:43:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17974712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avulle/pseuds/avulle
Summary: This wasn't how it was supposed to happen.They were supposed to have been rewarded.They were supposed to have a new universe, at their whim, at their beck and call.They weren't supposed to be shoved back into their shitty fucking garbage old universe, like not a goddamn thing had changed.(Except, of course, one and a half sweeps had still passed, and with that comes, well.  The obvious.)





	1. The Sufferer, Reborn

**Author's Note:**

> We're gonna be going through the trolls in ascending hemospectrum order, starting with mutant candy-red, and going up from there. Fourteen chapters planned, one for each troll, and then two that I'll just leave you in suspense for.
> 
> So when I wrote this, I had this image of imperial drones being these sort of spindly, warped, half-troll half-machine things that floated in the air and used psionics, so that's what we have here, instead of big hulking soldier things.
> 
> tw: graphic depictions of violence. It's a step above what we see in Scratch's Alternian histories, but such moments should be infrequent.
> 
> Other triggers will be mentioned in the notes of the relevant chapters, but the violence is here for all of them because Alternia.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You are Karkat Vantas (KNIGHT of BLOOD).
> 
> You wake up, after the game—
> 
> Which is funny, because you don’t remember going to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No additional warnings.

**> Be The Sufferer, Reborn**

 

You are Karkat Vantas (KNIGHT of BLOOD).

You wake up, after the game—

Which is funny, because you don’t remember going to sleep.

 

You wake up with the broken remains of a shattered recuperacoon in your ass—

With skin the color of a starless sky—

And with your respiteblock lit up with the bright candy-red of your mutant blood.

 

You do not panic because Karkat Vantas does not panic.

You do not panic as you stand up, as you scream, as you break the mirror under your oversized fist.

Your fist bleeds mutant, candy-red blood.

You are calm.

You are the calmest you have ever been.

Everything is fine.

(You have this under control.)

 

Trollian is ringing of the hook because you are a popular troll.

Everyone is always begging and scrabbling at your feet for your infinite fucking wisdom, and you can totally hear it, because in case you haven’t caught on—

You’re not panicking.

You’re fine.

Everything is fine.

(You are a dead troll walking.)

 

On trollian, there is a note called WHAT THE F8CK????????

It is a rainbow of colors like Gamzee’s fucking walls, and the words do not resolve themselves into words.

Kanaya is trolling you, grimAuxiliatrix flashing, but under her—

Under her and Vriska and Eridan—

There is one more troll.

One more name, flashing.

What does it say?

It almost looks like it says—

 

)(IC

 

You click on it, and the troll says—

 

)(IC: hey buoy

)(IC: i found you

)(IC: 38)

 

There is a knock at the door of your hive.

 _Knock knock_.

 _Knock knock_.

No one has ever knocked on the door of your hive before.

(Your friends have never visited you.)

Who knocks, on Alternia?

Your lusus screeches in displeasure and confusion, because he is dumb as a sack of rocks.

(It must be because of that candy-red blood of his.)

You didn’t even know he was alive, again.

 

It is one of your friends, you think, through the haze of your completely-calm, not-panic.

Through the candy-red blood on your fists, the shattered remains of your ablution repository, the water on your chest.

One of your friends is at your door.

Knocking at your door.

(Who even knocks, on Alternia?)

 

Mutant, your door says, in a broken, robotic voice.

Submit yourself to your culling.

 

(Culling drones.)

(Culling drones knock.)

 

The door of your hive shatters.

( _How did they know?_ )

Your lusus screams, in anger, then in fear, and then in pain.

You are not helping him.

Why aren’t you helping him?

 

You aren’t helping him because you are frozen, like a fucking wiggler.

You aren’t helping him because you are a fucking coward.

( _Who told them?_ )

( _Is this Gamzee’s idea of a joke?_ )

You finally slap yourself into action—

Start moving towards the door of your ablution block.

But it’s too late.

Your lusus is quiet now.

(You didn’t even get to see him again.)

He is dead, because of you.

( _What else is new?_ )

Culling drones don’t have boots to clomp up your stairs, but you can feel them coming.

Closer—

Closer—

Closer still.

 

It’s fine. You can do this.

You don’t need anyone’s help.

You run, towards the metal sheets covering the window in your ablution block—

( _Vriska, one last fuck you?_ )

( _Eridan, just to remind you all how much he wants you all to die?_ )

( _Is he alive again?_ )

The window shatters inwards, throwing you back, and there is not one culling drone in the air around your house but an entire fucking army of them.

They whir, as they float in the air—

A sea of brilliant yellow eyes.

( _Terezi, to get a step up as a legislacerator?_ )

( _Tavros, so they wouldn’t cull him for being a cripple?_ )

 

You equip your sickles—

And you scream a deafening roar of rage, as only adult trolls can do.

 _You can survive this_ , you tell yourself.

You fought Lord English.

(Except you didn’t.)

You beat the game.

(Except you didn’t even participate in the last battle.)

_You will make them regret this._

(You won’t.)

You lose.

(It’s not even a contest.)

( _Sollux, so he wouldn't be forced to follow in his ancestor's footsteps?_ )

( _Aradia, because she wanted another corpse to play with?_ )

 

You die, the sickle in your right arm broken and your left halfway across the room—

Staring up into yellow eyes and unsmiling faces as they disembowel you, make an example out of you.

( _Feferi, as her personal fucking sacrifice to the horrorterrors?_ )

( _Equius, just because he's a fucking asshole?_ )

You die, and you're thinking—

 _Please, let it have been anyone but Kanaya_.

 

You open your eyes, sometime later.

The sky out your window is the off-blue of almost dawn, and clear of the sea of yellow it had held before.

The floor of your ablution block is covered in the candy-red of your blood—

But your guts are all still inside of you, and your skin is unblemished.

(The torn remains of your clothes are gone, replaced by a pair of pajamas you only ever saw on dead versions of you.)

(There is a bleeding gash emblazoned across your chest.)

(You feel air brushing over skin you have never had when you stand, and your wings open behind you.)

 

Trollian is ringing.

Your chumproll is lit up like a fucking psychotic rainbow.

 

AT: uHH,,,

AT: tHAT wAS a jOKE,,,

AT: rIGHT?

AT: hAHA,

AT: yOU sURE gOT uS gOOD,

AT: hAHA,

 

AC: :33< *ac sniffs around karkitty’s horribly mangled body*

AC: :33< *she licks at his face trying to wake him up*

AC: :33< *ac says im sorry*

AC: :33< *ac says goodbye*

 

AG: Heeeeeeey.

AG: That was a r8l funny joke you p8lled.

AG: You really g8t 8s good, dumbass.

AG: Haha

AG: Karkat?

 

GA: Karkat, No

GA: Please, No

 

AA: hey karkat!

AA: im sorry about your lusus

AA: :(

AA: let me know if you want my help to arrange the corpse party

AA: :)

 

Right.

You almost forgot.

 

You go downstairs.

It is stained the same bright, candy-red as your ablution block, except—

This time, there’s more than just blood.

The pieces of what was once your lusus are scattered across your meal block.

It’s fine.

You’re an adult now anyways.

You don’t need a lusus, anymore.

 

(You don’t kneel in the candy-red blood covering your respite block.)

(You don’t scoop the severed head of your lusus into your arms.)

(You do not weep.)

(You are an adult, now.)

(And adults don’t cry.)

 

Trollian is still ringing.

You read it all, this time, hovering over the pieces of what was once your lusus—

Blood dripping magically out of your magical pants.

 

)(IC: i like ya symbol  buoy

)(IC: brings back some good MEMORI--ES

)(IC: lets make some new ones

 

Then you get to watch your friends panic, in fast forward—

Trying to escape culling drones—

Culling drones sent after them because they knew you.

(It’s Sollux who realizes it first.)

(TA: she2 lii2tening)

(TA: waiit, guy5, she2 lii2tening)

()(IC: carp on helsman to B--E)

()(IC: why ya gotta ruin ma fun)

You get to see them go silent, one by one.

(Vriska is the last of them to go silent.)

(AG: come and g8t m8 fishb8tch)

(AG: ill f8d you your own tr8dent)

 

This is your fault.

(It always has been.)

 

In the corner of your respiteblock, there is a pile of gray fabric.

It’s been there for as long as your remember.

It’s rough, under your fingers.

Old, worn.

There’s spots of dried blood on it, old enough candy-red looks rust.

Old enough jade looks olive.

You are not stupid enough you don’t know what it is.

(Whose it was.)

 

You wrap yourself in The Signless’s suncloth.

(You are The Sufferer, reborn.)

You pull it tight around your face, over the candy-red glow of your eyes, and you step out into the dawn.

 

Trollian is silent.

(You lose count, how many times you pull out your portable chumproll—)

(How many times you look at the name turntechGodhead.)

(Greyed out.)

(Offline.)

 

(The selfish, stupid part of you wishes he were here.)

(What little else there is of you is glad that he isn’t.)

(The rest of you doesn’t want to see what Alternia would do to thim.)

(Day by day, that reasonable part of you gets smaller, and smaller.)

(Until there is nothing but the selfish part of you left, and you curse him for not being here to suffer with you.)

 

You walk without purpose, or so you tell yourself.

You're not going anywhere, you're just trying to survive.

(It's an accident you end up on Sollux’s doorstep.)

Sollux’s hive is nothing more than a smoldering fucking ruin.

 

You're found for the first time, two days after you leave the smoking ruin of what was once Sollux’s hive.

A dank alleyway, just after sunset, in a city thick with the scent of troll shit.

A child bumps into you, looks up at your hard black chitin that your skin now is, and because you haven’t slept in two days, and your hood falls from your face.

Their grey face lights up with the candy-red of your blood.

No, he says.

Please, I promise I won't tell anyone.

Your hands drip with brown blood.

 

(You are The Sufferer, reborn.)

(You are the rage of his final scream, cursing the world for his suffering—)

(Wishing death upon them all.)

 

Next is Aradia’s hive.

It is no better than Sollux’s.

In front of it is a charred, blackened crater that still leaks psionics like Sollux’s anal fucking seepage.

The grass, outside the crater, is spotted with rust.

(You stare down at, and feel sick.)

 

A yellowblood child and a blueblood child later, you stand at the lip of the asscrack that separated Equius and Vriska’s hives.

Below you, the asscrack is awash with the cerulean blood of Vriska’s lusus.

The asscrack stinks to high heaven, because Vriska’s lusus is still there, slowly decaying.

(There is only half of it left.)

If you hadn't seen its decaying carcass, you might have thought that you had the wrong asscrack, because if you didn't know better—

You would think that there had never been hives here.

 

(How long has it been?)

(Three perigees, six perigees?)

(It is slow, traveling on foot.)

 

You steal to live.

You break into hives for food, sleep in caves.

(Your clothes are always clean, because they are godtier pajamas you didn't fucking earn.)

It's fine.

You don't doubt why you are trying so hard to live, at all.

No.

Not even a little.

 

Gamzee's hive is still whole.

It's fucking untouched.

( _It was him_.)

(He already killed you once.)

(...right?)

It probably wasn't him, because his hive is fucking abandoned.

But seeing it so whole makes you want to—

When your vision clears, Gamzee's hive is no more.

 

The Alternian desert is unfathomably large.

It stretches on for as far as the eye can see, with no shelter in sight.

You huddle under your suncloth and sleep during the day—

And you don't carry anywhere near enough water to make the trek.

(You die, twice.)

(Once of thirst—)

(And then again, of hunger.)

You never find Kanaya’s hive.

(You try and tell yourself it isn’t because it doesn’t fucking exist anymore.)

(But you don’t suceed.)

 

You are halfway to Tavros’s hive, in the middle of yet another city that smells like dank troll shit when the world heaves.

Glub.

A single sound, so loud, so everywhere it shatters your entire world.

There is a buzzing in your ears, blood in your mouth and your eyes and—

You are on your knees, coughing out bright, candy-redblood that streams down your face and pools in the ground beneath you.

Your blood pusher seizes.

(Stops.)

 

You wake up in a sea of blood.

Every color of the rainbow under teal.

You look up, and candy-redeyes meet yellow.

You kill it, but it's too late.

(It's not alone.)

 

You run and you hide and you run and you hide—

But you cannot escape.

They always find you.

(You kill them when you can—)

(Run away when you can't.)

 

A fucking battleship arrives, two days into your hopeless flight.

The air fills with culling drones, and the city goes up in flames.

You run, but now you cannot hide.

(You can’t escape.)

You slip behind a wall, and, for the first time in (a month?) (a year?) you draw out your Portable Chumproll.

 

You open up Trollian, and you have an unread troll.

)(IC: were you fuckin  hidin from me  buoy

)(IC: what are you doin still alive

)(IC: but i guess if you can survive gettin gutted

)(IC: then were gonna have so much  fin  together

 

You look at your chumproll.

(Which of them turned you in?)

(Which of them killed you all?)

Are any of them even still alive?

(They can’t all be dead.)

(They can’t be.)

 

They find you, and you're out again—

Over the tops of the buildings, out towards the edge of the city, but there is a ship above you—

Larger than any ship you’ve ever seen, and hordes of drones pour forth from within it.

 

CG: KANAYA.

 

In the light from your eyes it looks candy-red.

You blink, and it goes back to grey.

 

CG: KANAYA.

CG: KANAYA, I NEED YOUR HELP.

 

Your useless fucking wings buzz faster, and but you’re not even close to the edge of this miserable fucking city.

Trollian is silent, except for the messages of )(IC.

Two blocks, five blocks, and then—

 

GA: Karkat?

 

The air around you alights with psionics, and you dive towards the fiery ground—

Through the tight streets of shit-city.

 

GA: Is This A Trick?

CG: KANAYA, CAN YOU STILL DO THE SPACE THING?

 

Silence. 

 

GA: Where Are You?

 

You stop, feet brushing over the searingly hot concrete.

Before you, the drones rush towards you.

(Behind you, they rush towards you.)

Their eyes glow, and their grating, robotic sound of their laughter fills the city.

 

You open up your portable Chumproll’s handy location sharing feature, and send her your location.

 

Trollian is silent.

The drones come closer, closer—

Behind You

You turn, and Kanaya is behind you, standing on the molten asphalt like it's nothing.

She is smiling, her fangs on display.

It's Really You, she says.

You Are Not A Decoy Meant To Trap Me, she continues, like she is not surrounded on all sides by angry culling drones.

It Is Good To See You Again Friend, she says, and extends her hand to you.

You catch her hand, and she runs towards the drones, but in two steps she steps through them, twenty blocks in each step, dragging you along behind her.

A step later and you're at the edge of the city, two more and you're in the middle of a desert.

The stench of shit city is gone.

The whir of drones, the metallic clacking of their laughs is gone with it, like it was never there.

Kanaya is smiling before you, her gray skin untouched, her red skirt clean of her blood.

YOU’RE ALIVE.

This Is Not A Surprise

You Have Not Seen My Corpse

I However Have Seen Your Corpse

So

I Believe

Thats My Line

OH GOD YOU’RE ALIVE.

A pause.

Yes, she says, and her voice softens.

I THOUGHT I’D NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN.

()(IC: you cant get away from me that easily)

()(IC: im gonna hunt ya down and gut all throse precious fronds of yours in front of you)

()(IC: and if theyre anyfin like you, ill do it over)

()(IC: and over)

()(IC: and over again)

 

Kanaya is so small, now.

Except, she’s not any smaller.

It’s you.

Your massive pitch black hands shake as you raise them to her face.

You catch yourself, just in time.

(Kanaya is not your moirail.)

(Gamzee is—)

(You do not have a moirail, anymore.)

 

TELL ME IT WASN’T YOU, you say.

TELL ME IT WASN’T YOU WHO HATED ME SO FUCKING MUCH ENOUGH THAT THE FIRST THING YOU DID WHEN WE GOT BACK WAS TELL THE  CONDESCE  I WAS A MUTANT.

It Wasnt Me

 

They find you.

You are in the middle of a desert.

There is nothing living for troll miles.

(Of course they fucking find you.)

This time, though, you don’t have to run.

You just step forward, through a crack in the world, and you’re somewhere else.

Thousands of miles away.

No massive battleship above you.

No culling drones buzzing around you.

()(IC: you think ya clever, dont you guppie)

()(IC: you cant run from me forever)

 

Trollian is silent.

(she2 liistening)

 

Kanaya is alone.

(She does not take you to a hive where all your friends are hiding.)

(Waiting for you.)

(Because this is reality, and not a stupid wiggler night dream.)

You don't ask her why.

(You don't try and tell the rest of your friends you're still alive.)

 

The empire does not stop finding you.

The massive red behemoth of a drone ship appears above you.

Again.

And again.

And again.

 

A day passes, then two, then a lot more than that.

It’s kind of like being on the meteor.

Except you have to relocate every hour.

Except you have to steal your food.

Except the entire world is out to get you.

(Except that Dave and Rose are nowhere to be found.)

(And instead you and Kanaya have to make do with each other.)

But really—

It’s basically like being on the meteor.

(Kanaya still flinches a little, when she sees you out of the corner of her eye—)

(Until she remembers that, no—)

(That adult is you.)

 

Trollian lights up.

First time in weeks (perigees?)

(Even )(IChas tired of taunting you.)

(Tired of sending you her best artist renditions of your friends in various states of dismemberment.)

(She’s quiet.)

 

It’s Sollux.

It’s Sollux and some bumfuck you don’t recognize.

(dontFucking… something)

(You only bother reading up to the g before clicking on Sollux’s name.)

 

TA: karkat

TA: im cornered

TA: plz

TA: theyre comin for me

TA: they wanna put me in a fuckin ship

 

You look up, and Kanaya face is lit yellow by her portable chumproll.

She looks up, and meets your eyes.

She reaches out, and you take her hand.

She walks the rifts—

The holes and irregularities in the fabric of the universe

As you follow her, the world warping around you, you wonder—

When did Sollux get over his fucking lisp?

You look down at portable chumproll.

dontFuckingTru5tTwinArmaggedon5It5NotMe

Stares back at you from your crumproll, blinking.

In the window you have open, a single emoji blinks back at you.

 

TA:  38)

 

KANAYA, WAIT—

 

You try to stop her, but you're too weak to stop her, and even if you weren't—

You’re too late, because you’re always too fucking late.

Kanaya turns back to you, and you are starting into her eyes as she dies, falling into two pieces at your feet.

There is jade blood everywhere.

Above her stands not a fucking culling drone but a grown ass fucking subjuggulator, her yellow and red painted face split with a grisly grin.

(All around you, the world erupts in the screaming hoots and laughter of the dark carnival.)

(Above the hooting and hollering of the dark carnival, you can hear an agonized scream.)

(You do not realize it is yours.)

 

It’s fine.

You couldn’t have been the only one who came back godtier—

And.

And.

This isn’t heroic!

This isn’t just!

She’ll be back!

You just have to—

 

(You just have to fight off an army of fucking subjuggulators, even though you couldn't best an army of culling drones.)

 

The subjuggulators around you don't touch you. 

The subjuggulator in front of you doesn't reach for you.

She crouches before Kanaya, instead.

Dips her fingers in the jade blood that is _everywhere_ , and begins smearing it over her paint.

TOUCH HER AND DIE, NOOKSUCKER, you scream at her, and she just smiles.

She reaches out, and caresses Kanaya’s dead face, just like—

(Just like fucking Gamzee did when he had Tavros’s fucking head in his arms.)

I SAID FUCKING STOP

She doesn’t fucking stop.

She carves Kanaya’s head from her body instead.

()(IC: im gonna hunt ya down and gut all throse precious fronds of yours in front of you)

()(IC: and if theyre anyfin like you, ill do it over)

()(IC: and over)

()(IC: and over again)

You equip your sickles.

STOP

The other subjuggulators are gathering around you, not touching you because _you aren’t a motherfucking threat to them—_

Dippingtheir dirty fucking fingers into Kanaya’s blood.

(They hoot and they holler and they laugh and THEY FUCKING IGNORE YOU.)

You can’t see straight, the entire world is painted the CANDY RED of your blood.

You should be scared, but you’re fucking not.

You are FUCKING TIRED of BEING SCARED.

You are the KNIGHT OF BLOOD.

You are a GOD.

And these fuckers will bow before you.

 

I WILL BOIL THE BLOOD IN YOUR VEINS

YOU BULGELICKING NOOKWORM ING WASTES OF BLOOD

YOU WILL SCREAM AS YOU MY RAGE  BOILS  YOU ALIVE FROM THE INSIDE OUT

 

The jade blood on the ground bubbles, pops, steams around mutli-colored fingers.

There is steam in the cramped room.

The choking, horrible scent of boiled blood.

The subjuggulators stop laughing.

 

They scream as their indigo blood boils in their veins.

A horrible, enraged scream.

They reach for you, but the chitin on their arms bubbles and their arms fucking _break_.

They scream their voiceboxes out, and then scream some more as their blood breaks their skin, and leaves them as broken, twisted messes of empty black flesh on the ground.

Culling drones pour in, other adults, an entire fucking regiment of adult threshecutioners—

They come and they come and they come—

And they die and they die and they _fucking_ die.

Until finally, the battleship around you is dead.

Dead, empty—

Filled with nothing but ghosts, broken drones, and a fucking rainbow of blood vapor.

 

You stand there, in the deafening emptiness of the dead battleship—

And you take out your portable chumproll.

 

)(IC: ya think ur hot shit guppie

)(IC: dat aint even a drop in the sea of ma  bitches

)(IC: an theyre all comin for you

 

You take a deep breath.

It stinks of boiled blood, burned plastic and cooked troll.

 

CG: ALRIGHT.

CG: YOU WANT A WAR,  YOU NOOKWHIFFING BULGESUCKING SPAWN OF A HORRORTERROR ?

 

One more breath. 

 

CG: CONGRATULATIONS.

CG: YOU FUCKING GOT ONE.

 

**> Karkat: Be the Sufferer, Reborn**

 

Fuck no.

You are not going to bleed for people who will do nothing but watch you die.

You are—

 

CG: I AM  YOUR FORETOLD  FUCKING E%ECUTOR

CG:  PREPARE YOUR WASTE CHUTE

CG: BECAUSE I AM GOING STUFF EVERYTHING YOU’VE SHAT OUT ONTO ALTERNIA IN YOUR WORTHLESS EXCUSE FOR A LIFE BACK UP IT BEFORE I FUCKING THESHEXECUTE YOU

 

(You are The E%ecutor, reborn.)

(And unlike that worthless waste of blood—)

(You are not going to miss.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)
> 
> Let's go.


	2. The Handmaid, Reborn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You are Aradia Megido (MAID of TIME).
> 
> You wake up, and you are back on Alternia!
> 
> You were pretty sure this is NOT WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN, but you are TOTALLY OKAY WITH THIS!
> 
> This is great!
> 
> There are so many dead things on Alternia you never got to see—
> 
> So many corpse parties you never got to have!
> 
> (That new universe, you can only imagine how long it would have to be until it had even half as many dead things as Alternia!)
> 
> Everything is wonderful!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three guesses who my favorite troll is, and the first two don't count :)
> 
> Sorry about the delay—I'd meant to only wait like a week, but the last couple of weeks have sort of gotten away from me, so here we are.
> 
> Finally: I tagged this fic for graphic depictions of violence because I wasn't comfortable with the stuff I put in this chapter be in an untagged fic, so uhhh, be aware.
> 
> tw: graphic depictions of violence  
> tw: references to slavery

**> Be The Handmaid, Reborn**

 

You are Aradia Megido (MAID of TIME).

You wake up, and you are back on Alternia!

You were pretty sure this is NOT WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN, but you are TOTALLY OKAY WITH THIS!

This is great!

There are so many dead things on Alternia you never got to see—

So many corpse parties you never got to have!

(That new universe, you can only imagine how long it would have to be until it had even half as many dead things as Alternia!)

Everything is wonderful!

 

Your friends seem a little less excited about the prospect.

Vriska is the loudest about it.

Or at least—

The first.

WHAT THE F8CK????????

She is the eloquentist.

It is her.

Mostly everyone seems to agree, but a couple of people are conspicuously absent!

Most notably—

Karkat.

(And Gamzee and Eridan and Feferi and Equius and arguably also you!)

(You have not responded to the memo.)

(You are retrieving your adventuring hat!)

(Which exists again!)

(It is as dapper as you remember!)

 

Have you mentioned your lusus is alive again?

She is much smaller than you remember her being!

(And your hive is not destroyed!)

Have you also mentioned how great this is?

You are very excited.

If you were Feferi, you would be EXCIT-------ED.

You’re not, though.

So you’re just excited!

You’re sure nothing will go wrong.

TA: ii don’t have to tell you guy2 how obviiou5ly thii5 ii5 goiing two go wrong, riight?

AG: Right, because it hasn’t gone at all wrong already!!!!!!!

(They’re just grumpy.)

 

There’s a knock on your door.

Well, it seems like you’re getting culled!

(Everyone knows only culling drones knock on Alternia.)

You open your door, before they can break it down, pocketing your Portable Chumproll™.

Their eyes flash, but you freeze them in place before their eye beams can cut you down.

That was close!

Clocks tick over each of them, and their yellow eyes sort of wiggle in their sockets.

You pap their faces a little, and skip past them.

It seems they brought friends, but thankfully none of them are Bec Noir, so you freeze them all in place, too.

 

You pull out your Portable Chumproll™, sort of idly wondering why you’re being culled.

You’ve been a good little rustblood—you haven’t even tried to overthrow the government yet!

Maybe it’s those highbloods you killed in your FLARP sessions?

You doubt it, thought.

You open your Portable Chumproll™, and there is an unfamiliar handle in a very familiar font, staring back at you from WHAT THE F8CK????????.

)(IC: http://i.trollimgur.com/0LgKaFT.trollgifv

)(IC: ur next

)(IC: fuckin traitors

)(IC: 38)

AG: Oh my g8d.

TA: ii told you 5o

AG: Don’t fucking told you so me.

AG: Get her the f8ck out of our memo, shit for br8ns.

TA: iim a liittle bu5y

You open the gif, and it is not at all what you were expecting.

Oh my.

It has been a long time since you saw troll bowels!

They are longer than you remember.

(Karkat’s blood is also so much redder than you remember.)

(You don’t like it—)

(It’s such an unpleasant color.)

 

The color is almost enough to let your concentration break, and bring about fifty culling drones down upon you—

But you catch yourself, just in time.

You reach for Karkat’s ghost, through the smattering of ghosts moaning around you—

And you find nothing.

It feels a lot like what you felt when you made Vriska pay.

So you’re pretty sure he’s still alive!

(You open your wings into the air, just to make sure they’re still there.)

 

Crabdad, though.

Crabdad is dead.

You send Karkat your condolescension.

He’ll get it eventually.

You think.

Otherwise, well—

The more the merrier, right?

Right.

 

You look briefly around you, at the gathering of potential corpses.

You could have a really big corpse party here.

But—

That’s more of a friend activity.

Doing it alone with just your lusus for company seems kind of…

Lonely.

 

From the horizon, you see a streak of red and blue streaking across the sky towards you like a meteor.

A psiioniic meteor.

You sure hope Vriska isn’t mind-controlling him this time.

It probably wouldn’t be either just or heroic, but if she uses Sollux to kill you again—

Well, you’re not sure what you’d do!

(Except, of course fucking killing her until she stops coming back.)

You wave to him as he drops out of his ballistic trajectory, and comes down to float before you.

You wave to your half-moirail.

hi sollux! you say.

an5wer your fuckiing me55ages, he lisps.

(It’s only been two days, but you were already missing his lisp.)

(It’s so much cuter in person!)

 

sorry, you say. i was distracted!

look my hive is back!

also my lusus!

Your lusus obligingly jumps on your shoulders and (lovingly) digs her claws into your shoulders hard enough your rust blood wells up around her claws.

He’s been drifting towards you, until the sign on his shirt is so close you can rub your nose in it.

You fail to resist the urge to rub your nose in it.

He hesitates, because he still feels guilty about the whole—

Killing you, your lusus, and destroying your hive thing.

(But it’s fine!)

(You got better.)

 

that5 great AA, he says, after a long pause, spelling it out, because he likes to be consistent between when he talks and when he types, even when it’s stupid!

His hand settles in your hair, and he scritches at your scalp, because you guess he’s in a pale mood today.

have you heard from FF?

5he5 not an5weriing trolliian

You reach out, in the general direction that you think the palace is, and find nothing.

(And, from previous experience with a tyrian ghost, you can’t imagine you would be able to miss it.)

i cant feel her! you tell his wimpy, pitiful little chest.

You wrap your arms around it, and dig your claws into his back, scritching him back.

(Only drawing a little of his yellow blood.)

although that might just be because she didnt come back with us!

There is a moment of silence before Sollux floats back, out of your your arms, two of his fingers trailing along your horns as he backs away.

He doesn’t look as comforted by this as you had expected.

that5 super comforting AA

thank5 for remiindiing me, he says.

He starts to drift up, because Sollux has never in his life said goodbye to anyone.

 

wait! you say.

dont you want to have a corpse party with me?

look at all these potential corpses!

we could build the biggest corpse fire!

He stops, and looks down at the frozen drones all around you, like he didn’t even notice them before.

a5 temptiing a5 that ii5, he says.

no

 

He looks like he’s starting to drift off again.

wait, you say again.

This time, you float up to match him.

He twitches a brow ridge at you, and—

Because you are _not_ in a pale mood today—

You grab his face in both of your claws, and smash your lips together and kiss him until rust and yellow blood it dripping down both of your chins, and down onto the frozen drones below you.

And then you kiss some more.

You’ve got blood in a lot more places, now!

There are long scratches down your chest, down his back—

In all sorts of other places, too.

 

It’s exciting!

He hasn’t kissed you back like this since he died!

You haven’t kissed him like this since you died!

It’s so exciting you forget all about all those culling drones you have frozen below you.

 

The air around you alights with murderous psiioniics, and you break apart.

The psiioniics bend around the both of you, because Sollux is just the best psiioniic there is.

He’s streaked with rust and yellow and he’s _beautiful_.

You smile at him, and you know you’re just as filthy as he is.

He smiles back at you, all of those deliciously overgrown teeth on display, painted with your rust—

And then he glances down at the culling drones below you, and they vanish in a flash of blinding psiioniics.

A raging corpse fire burns below you.

Your smile grows, stretching your cheeks tight.

Sollux always knows how to show you he cares.

but 5eriiou5ly

ii have to go

(He doesn’t, but you’re not going to stop him.)

okay, you say, kind of begrudgingly.

(He twitches at the word.)

bye, sollux!

have fun with feferi!

that5 not why iim goiing, he lies.

(Like Feferi needs him to protect him.)

You watch him go, your bottom warmed by the corpse fire below you through the long streaks Sollux tore in the soft pajamas covering your butt.

(You hope he forgets how stained he is with you.)

(You hope he comes back, stained with tyrian, and you and he can paint a motherfucking tapestry.)

(There might be just a bit of subjuggulator in your rust blood.)

 

You scritch at raptormom’s jaw, and she growls at you, digging her claws deeper into your shoulder.

She is the cutest!

It is her.

(You’d sort of forgotten about her when you’d been having your sloppy makeout with Sollux!)

(Good thing she hadn’t been down there, though, or else she would have been super dead!)

 

You check trollian, but nothing particularly interesting is happening.

Everyone is still being sad about Karkat being dead, even though he’s not.

It occurs to you that you didn’t tell Sollux that Karkat was still alive.

Whoops!

You probably should have done that!

You are about to tell everyone when you read—

TA: she2 lii2tening

TA: waiit, guy5, she2 lii2tening

Oh well.

You probably shouldn’t mention it, then.

That might get Karkat for-reals-culled.

Which would be…

Bad

Yeah.

Bad.

You look back down at your corpse fire, and you smile.

 

Once your corpse fire has burned itself out—

(And you froze not one but two more waves of culling drones that have been sent after you—)

You spin, and then spin and spin and spin some more—

And then you set off!

(Your adventuring hat flaps majestically in the wind!)

You don’t know where you’re going, but this is Alternia!

There is never any shortage of corpses!

Or dead things!

Anywhere but the ruins of the frog temple you spent altogether too long being super dead in!

Off you go!

 

It doesn’t take you long!

(Because this is Alternia!)

Only an hour or two, and then you are dropping to the ground in front of the ruins of a set of hives so old they were built out of stone!

(Exciting!)

Your feet touch the ground, and the hives’ dead residents rise up to greet you.

hi! you say.

(You are excited to see them, but they do not seem very excited to see you.)

 

It is a very exciting ruin, and contains a number of very exciting dead trolls, but it’s not that big.

You go through it all in only a couple of days!

But, thankfully—

This is Alternia.

And off you go again!

(The culling drones also don’t stop being a thing—)

(You don’t really know how they found you, but it’s fine!)

(They’re not really a threat to you.)

 

About a month and two sets of ruins later, as your lusus is entertaining herself with mauling a squeakbeast—

And you are carefully brushing the dust off of a skull with squiggly horns, you hear a voice behind you.

It is low, deep, and—

MOTHERFUCKING SHIT

(Chucklevoodoo-y.)

what’s a gutterblood like you doing in a place like this.

I SHOULD HAVE YOU MOTHERFUCKING CULLED FOR YOUR MOTHERFUCKING GALL

coming in my hive like it ain’t nothing

SHITBLOOD I WILL—

You’re almost scared!

Subjuggulators are pretty scary.

But then you look down at the skull under your hands, and you recognize it.

hi kurloz!

You turn, and The Grand Highblood falls silent.

He is super big!

Twice your height, maybe more!

You were not prepared for just how much bigger than you he would be.

His eyes are a bright indigo, but when you say his name, they flicker—

And then fade to white.

invertesister

CARE TO MOTHERFUCKING INFORM A BROTHER HOW YOU KNOW HIS MOTHERFUCKING WIGGLER NAME?

i didn’t never even tell my palest bitchsister my wiggler name

SO  WHO THE MOTHERFUCK ARE YOU

(As you leave, The Grand Highblood vanishes into nothing—)

(Into whatever awaits the dead in this world without dreambubbles.)

(You are Death’s Handmaid, reborn.)

 

 

Kurloz is the first (and probably the scariest!) but he is not the last.

(Have you mentioned culling drones that always find you!)

(Those haven’t stopped being a thing that is happening.)

(They are kind of starting to piss you off.)

 

Next is the ruin of a justicerator’s court!

Well, well.

Who’s this?

I don’t imagine you’ll tell me where I am?

I might be dead, but I  surely  didn’t die here.

She doesn’t appear behind you, like The Grand Highblood, did!

She just appears in front of you!

Materializing out of nothing!

She’s courteous, that way.

More courteous than you were expecting—

Holding herself like royalty—

(Like Eridan thinks he holds himself—)

(Like Feferi always has.)

(Like there is nothing that stands above her.)

She towers over you, not quite as much as The Grand Highblood, but still by quite a bit!

Her powers flicker, her symbol appearing in the center of her forehead, and then there is someone else in your head.

Tell me, wiggler

Where am I?

You take back everything you said about her being courteous!

stop, you say.

She doesn’t stop. 

i said—

She digs in hard, stretching her _cerulean_ fingers deeper into your pan.

Your vision goes a little cerulean.

(A little rust.)

STOP

You pick her up with your psiioniics, bash her into the solid back wall of the court.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

You slam her against the wall, over and over and over again.

CERULIAN BLOOD SCUM

I WILL RIP YOUR SOUL APART AND SCATTER YOU ACROSS THE SEVEN CONTINENTS

Again, and again, until the wall crumples, and what’s left of the court’s ceiling tries to collapse on your both.

You are out of things to slap her against, so you hold her up to you, and you roar in her face.

GET OUT OF MY MIND

I AM NOT YOUR PLAYTHING

(She is still in your mind, digging around—)

You roar again.

YOU ARE MINE

The symbol in her forehead breaks, and your mind is clear.

(You’re a little embarrassed of yourself, to be honest!)

(Look at all of this priceless history you’ve destroyed!)

You set her on the ground, as carefully as you can.

Marquise Mindfang looks up at you, her eyes wide and blank—

And she smiles.

She laughs, long, happy, and loud.

(You wonder if Vriska would sound like this—)

(But you’ve never heard her laugh.)

Where were you when I was still alive, rust8lood?

The things we could have done together .

We could have conquered the world !

You are flattered—

(You have never been so brazenly flush-propositioned before—)

But also a little creeped out!

You’re still a juvenile!

She is an adult!

youre kinda gross! you tell her.

i dont think i like you much at all!

That just makes her laugh louder.

Of course you don’t.

What is your name, rust8lood?

aradia

Aradia, she says, saying it long and slow, swishing it around in her mouth like grubwine.

It’s a good name.

i know, you say. i picked it

I’m—

aranea

i know

Marquise Mindfang’s smile slips.

There is something like fear in her face—

Fear that hadn’t been there, even when you were slamming her across the room in your blind rage.

(Behind you, Marquise Mindfang follows The Grand Highblood into the great unknown—)

(Maybe one day, you will be steward of that realm, as well.)

(One day.)

 

The dim season ends.

The bright season begins.

You have to spend longer huddled under shelter from the sun—

You can spend less time wandering around ruins.

You’re a little sad about it, but right as the seasons turn, Sollux comes to visit you!

(There is a push and pull to your psiioniics—)

(You can always find him, and he can always find you.)

(You wonder if that’s how The Condesce keeps finding you to send culling drones after you.)

hi sollux!

hey AA, he says.

hows feferi?

FF’5 fiine

(Oh, how you missed his lisp.)

(His shirt is irregularly spotted with tyrian, and you figure she’s an awful lot more than fine.)

You make a pile of ancient artifacts in the ruins of what was once some sort of communal hive, and together, you hide from the sun.

(This time, you’re both in a pale mood.)

The culling drones come, and this time—

He stays for the corpse party.

 

He’s been with you for almost a week when a ghost appears beside your pile.

(Sollux is twitching with daymares, but you are awake.)

(You rarely sleep.)

The Ψiioniic stares down at you, and his face is vacant.

hi mituna, you say.

He remains silent.

His figure is gaunt.

Psiioniic-repressing goggles are strapped to his face—

Welded into his skin.

you can stay as you long want, you say.

but youre not dead

so you can’t stay forever

(There are things on Alternia worse than death.)

You pat the pile beside you, between you and Sollux, and The Helmsman doesn’t move, like he’s forgotten he can.

You blink, and instead of The Ψiioniic staring down at you, life gone from his everything (dead but still living) you see Sollux.

(Inside of you, a deep pit of rage—of hate—begins to stir.)

(Rage Vriska, then Equius, and then Marquise Mindfang stirred.)

(Rage Her Imperious Condescension is stirring, now.)

(You will make her pay.)

You blink again, and The Helmsman is back.

dont worry, you tell him, lifting yourself from the pile that is as bony and uncomfortable as your ½ moirail, and setting a hand against his slack, blank face.

it wont be for much longer!

you deserve to die!

ill come for you

His lips twitch.

Almost like he’s about to smile.

But he doesn’t.

There is a brief yellow glow from within his goggles, and then he’s gone.

Beneath you, Sollux wakes from his daymare with a cry.

AA? he says blearily, his eyes failing to focus in the brightness of the day.

(Have you mentioned how cute he is?)

im here, you say, and drift down to his side.

He curls into you, his form pitiful and weak and nowhere near as broken as The Ψiioniic’s.

(You won’t let her touch him.)

 

Sollux leaves, two days after that.

(by the way karkats still alive!)

(what)

(You didn’t forget this time!)

The Helmsman does not return.

The Dolorosa appears, instead.

Where Am I she says, and her voice is broken.

Dead.

Her hands are limp and chained in front of her—

There is a spot in her forehead burned cerulean.

youre in the incestuous capitol of the old republic, you tell her.

this is the lower house

Her eyes are a bright Jade, but they fail to focus.

You’ve seen it before.

(Too many times before.)

Is It she says.

Where Is Mindfang

I Cant Think Without Her

Where Is—

(Gosh, Mindfang sure is the worst!)

Then she stops, a shiver passing through her body.

The color drains from her eyes, the chains fall from her wrists, and the circle of burned cerulean vanishes from her forehead.

You can no longer see her pupils, but you know she is staring at you.

Im Dead

thats right!

nothing can hurt you anymore!

(Being dead is great!)

(You would know!)

If I Am Dead

Where Is My Son

She is faster than you expected, and she has her hands in your pajamas before you can blink, dragging you up to her eye level.

(She is not as tall as Marquise Mindfang.)

(She is still taller than you, and your legs dangle in the air.)

She’s snarling at you, and you’re feeling a little pitch-flirted with!

Her fangs are really distractingly long!

You have to take a moment to stop thinking about all of the places you’d want those fangs!

i dont know where kankri is!

but im sure youll see him again

She frowns.

How Do You Know My Sons Wiggler Name

i know yours too!

hi porrim!

its so nice to see you again!

She doesn’t look very happy you know her wiggler name.

You hope you don’t get like that when you become an adult!

You like your wiggler name!

You want everyone to know it!

(You want The Condesce to _never be able to forget it_.)

 

You leave the lower house of incestuous capitol of the old republic behind, but when you do—

The Dolorosa does not vanish into the great unknown, behind you.

You can still feel her, in the air around you, in the dust under your feet, tagging at your heels.

(She was not convinced by your promises to send her son after her.)

 

Then, for a while, there are no extra special ghosts!

Just normal ghosts!

You explore a battleship so old two of its tines had broken off, and it looked like a wand!

You explore the upper house of the incestuous capitol, and its many pale orgy rooms!

(People in the past sure are weird!)

You find some ruins of a whole city buried by a volcano!

You get to spend a whole perigee picking corpses out of volcanic stone!

You get to see what they were doing, in a normal day!

What they were wearing!

It’s great!

Life is great!

Alternia is great!

(The extra special ghosts come back, though.)

(You’re not done, yet.)

(You are Death’s Handmaid, reborn.)

 

As you fly away from the volcano city you look down upon the desert below you—

And you find a familiar hive.

It is still mostly intact—

But it's empty.

Well, not empty empty!

It's filled with reams and reams of fabric!

Also, other things you think are used in sewing!

Oh, and also the corpse of Kanaya’s lusus.

It’s just that Kanaya isn’t there—

Which is basically the same thing as being empty!

 

Your lusus jumps down from your shoulder as your feet fall to Kanaya’s tiled floor, and begins to snuffle at Kanaya’s lusus’s corpse.

(She’s been dead a long time.)

You stay there for the day, because the hive still has enough structural integrity to protect you against the coming dawn, and you were gonna need to look for shelter soon enough.

(The bright season sucks!)

(You hate it!)

Instead of sleeping, you decide to spend the day having a private little corpse party in grubmom’s honor.

It’s fun!

Your lusus participates, and only bites you a couple times, so you know she's having fun, too.

You wrap Kanaya’s dead lusus all up in Kanaya’s colorful fabric, which makes her look a little like an enormous tubular subjuggulator painting.

(You didn't know Kanaya had such an array of brightly colored fabrics!)

(How scandalous of her!)

You burn her in Kanaya’s foodblock, and the smoke is not as colorful as you'd been hoping it would be.

The smoke draws the culling drones, and you have to fight them off in the middle of the afternoon, which isn't much fun at all!

But it's fine!

You start to think that maybe solo corpse parties aren't so bad, after all.

 

The sun sets, the corpse fire dies down, and when the smoke clears, there is an adult troll standing across from you.

There is a noose hanging limply from her neck, its cleanly cut end splitting her sign in half, twice over.

She looks tired, like she's been walking for a very long time indeed, and is going to have to walk for longer still.

The teal bags under her eyes are deep, peeking out from beneath her bright red glasses.

She isn’t looking at you.

She isn’t looking at anything.

hello latula, you say.

welcome to  grubmom’s  corpse party

She turns towards you.

Her nostrils flare, and her grey tongue darts out to taste the air.

Then she looks down at you, dead on—like she can see you, even though you know she can’t.

It’s been a long time since anyone has called me that, juvenile, she says, her accent too stiff, too high for her blood.

has it?

Yes.

There is a brief silence, in which the wind blows in from the gaping hole in Kanaya’s hive that was once her door, stirring the smoke of the corpsefire, and not stirring the noose still hanging from Neophyte Redglare’s neck.

Who killed it? she asks.

the empire

The empire killed a mother grub? she asks, even though you never said what Kanaya’s lusus was.

What was her crime?

well, i guess it was being the lusus of a troll who was friends with a mutant!

Something in her stance changes, and her tongue darts out to touch the air, again.

A grave crime, indeed, she says.

But as a fellow criminal, I suppose it would be best if I paid my respects.

She folds herself down, and sits across from you.

She folds folds her cane across her lap, and takes a deep breath of the smoke.

a fellow criminal?you ask, because—

Geez, you hadn’t heard that before!

(The scandal!)

(What would Terezi say?)

Of the gravest variety, she says.

And then she reaches through the loose hole of her noose, and draws a small metal charm from within the neck of her shirt.

You stare at it, for a moment.

but that wasnt what killed you, you say.

She tilts her head, her mirrored red gaze upon you.

No.

A hoarde of enraged rustbloods killed me, she says, and then she smiles, just a little.

No hint of teeth.

(A highblood smile.)

(Taunting you to go for it.)

(To give them an excuse they don’t need.)

Are you going to hang me, rustblood?

It sounds like she’s saying something entirely different.

But if she is, she isn’t saying those things to you.

i dont know, you tell her.

do you deserve to be hanged?

Her smile widens, the highblood pride bleeding out of it, and, for the first time you see her sharp, dagger teeth.

The noose vanishes from her neck.

The dull grey of the symbol at her neck dyes itself a bright, candy red.

Y3S.

(As you return to the sky once more, Neophyte Redglare fades into the smoke, and into the realm that will one day be yours.)

 

The bright season reaches its peak, and the nights get shorter still.

You are down to only a couple of hours every night, in which you are free of the searing rays of the sun.

(It’s annoying!)

(You don’t like it!)

It is at midnight, not longer after the solstice, flying away from an old plantation that really wasn’t much fun at all—

When, for the first time, you find that you are not flying alone!

hello comrade, the adult says to you.

He is massive, larger than Mindfang, almost as large as The Grand Highblood.

His face is soft, and kind.

(You never thought you’d say that about an adult!)

He keeps pace with your flight effortlessly, his wings rippling in the wind.

His voice is low and warm in a way only a warmblood’s voice can be.

hi rufioh! you say.

He is the first of your ancestors who smiles upon hearing his name.

(You fly together, and when you land, he is gone, vanished beyond the dream bubbles, out into the realm beyond the horrorterrors.)

 

The end of the bright season finds you in an ancient battleship, buried in a desert, halfway across Alternia from Kanaya’s desert.

It is the third crashed battleship you have found, but this one is an obvious antique!

It’s not even a fork!

It’s a dull grey, not a speck of red paint in sight!

The inside of the ship is still pristine, the inside sealed until you unseal it!

(Your lusus entertains herself un-pristine-ing it by biting everything she can find because she remains the cutest.)

You set your adventuring hat on a little straighter, and march on!

(There are a lot of bodies strewn across the corridors!)

(You are going to have the _biggest_ corpse party.)

(Alternia is great!)

 

As you wind down your tour of the battleship, gathering up all of the corpses for your party, you realize you’re missing someone.

You have the captain, the first mate, all the grunts—

But you don’t have the helmsman!

You can’t have the corpse party without the helmsman!

You go through the ship again, and then again.

But there is no Helmsblock!

Where there should be a Helmsblock, there is just a room filled with random metal pile!

No tentacles, no corpse!

It’s probably a weird old pale orgy room!

Just like the Incestuous Capitol!

wheres the helmsblock? you ask the metal pile, willing it to give you its secrets.

(Ideally the ones that do not involve a twenty-troll pale orgy.)

(Your lusus helps by bounding atop the pile, and biting at it.)

This is the helmsblock, the shadows respond.

You turn, and an adult troll materializes out of the shadows, his head cradled in his hands.

He is a large troll, large enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with The Grand Highblood.

With The Summoner.

But he doesn’t look it, not hunched up on himself, head in his hands.

He wears his symbols on his shoulder, a bright glaring white in the darkness that twists and twirls around him.

His long black hair is pooled on his knees, and drips down to the floor, like it has not been cut in a long, long time.

if this is the helmsblock, you ask him

where’s the helmsman?

There is no helmsman, he says, to his hands.

This ship had no need of a helmsman

Silence follows his statement.

He has yet to move, his head buried in his hands.

You step forward, once, and then again, until his horns are pointed at your chest.

(They are pointed a little too accurately at your rumble spheres, actually!)

(You move a little to the side.)

horuss, you say.

He lifts his head from his hands, turns his face up to meet yours.

He does not straighten his back.

Who is Horuss? he asks, and his voice is lost.

Why is that name so  familiar?

You look at the future face of the troll you could have pitied—

The troll you did pity.

You look at the face of a troll who has forgotten his name, and he is so pitiful now, you can’t help yourself.

(Your flushed quadrant is only half-filled, after all.)

You place your hand against his face.

He frowns at you.

Stop that at once.

okay

Blue tears leak from beneath his black goggles.

He bows his head into his hands once more, and his blue tears drip onto the floor between you.

you did what you could, you tell him.

I could have killed her.

I was the E%ecetor, I failed my—

you couldnt have saved him

His shoulders shake, and he does not speak again.

(You leave the curiously empty helmsblock behind, the corners empty of curiously dense shadows—)

(The E%ecutor behind you no longer hiding within them.)

(You will see him again, you are sure.)

 

Then you have the biggest corpse party!

The smoke from your corpsefires draw all of the culling drones, but it’s worth it!

You’ve never had such a large corpse party before!

You even open Trollian to tell Sollux to come join you!

And he does, just for the night.

Neither of you are in a particularly pale mood—

so you have sloppy, sloppy makeouts in the light of the corpsefire—

And it’s _wonderful_.

 

The next day you fly inland (outland?)—

Towards the sea.

You have far from exhausted the dead things in the deserts and forests—

(This is Alternia!)

But you haven’t yet explored a sunken ruin!

You’ve been missing out!

So you set off towards the ocean, and the bright season makes it take longer than it should, three days instead of just two―

But you get there!

And it’s _great_!

You find the wreck of the unsinkable ship (sunken, of course)—

A pirate ship—

And, of course, all manner of abandoned violetblood hives!

Unfortunately!

They are all disappointingly devoid of corpses.

Apparently the sharks that keep trying to eat you also like to eat troll bodies!

Who knew!

 

So, after two weeks of enjoying all the dead things the Alternian seas have to offer, you turn your gaze back to the land. 

As you fly away, you see, in the distance, Tavros’s figure—

His back straight, a mass of minions arrayed before him.

Over the wind, you can hear him speak.

He talks of rebellion, of freedom.

Of another way.

His voice is higher than The Summoner’s, but it is warm, like his was.

 _Compelling_ , like his was.

 

When you are two hours from the sea, the earth rumbles.

Glub, you hear—

And it is deafening.

It is everywhere—

In your ears, in your eyes in your bones—

In your bloodpusher, in your fingers, and in your _tongue_.

(You are the lowest of the low.)

(You never had a chance.)

You are suddenly a fountain of your own rust blood—

You can barely see, and what you can see is rust rust and more rust—

Pouring from your eyes and your mouth and your ears and your nose and everywhere it can get out.

And, on your shoulder, your lusus begins to scream—

A twisted, broken mirror of your own suffering.

( _No_ , you think, past the deafening echoes of the glub in your everything.)

( _Not again_.)

You try to reach for your lusus, but she is gone from your shoulder, tumbling away from you—

Her eyes blank, and her white scales a mess of a mixture of your blood.

You try to move towards her, try to will your wings to move with you, but for the first time, they don’t heed your call.

The ground is rushing up beneath you, fast and deadly, but—

Before you hit the ground—

(Before you die—)

Your hand brushes your lusus’s tough hide, and you—

 _Push_.

(You crash into the ground.)

(Whether it’s the fall that kills you, or Gl’bgolyb’s glub is an open, but ultimately irrelevant question.

(You die, all the same.)

 

You awaken, sometime later, and the sky is blindingly bright.

(It’s day.)

(It’s a day, in the bright season.)

But flinch, but you are not on fire.

You are in the arms of an adult troll, tucked into its body—

Hidden in the shadow of their suncloth.

You look up the column of their throat—

Up at the underside of their jaw.

You can’t see their face, but you suspect you know it, anyways.

On your chest is a plain brown book and pants dyed the candy-red of a mutant’s blood.

thank you, you say.

youre welcome, she says.

The glare around her face vanishes, and you blink against the sudden darkness, momentarily blinded.

You are lain on the ground—

wait!

but when you open your eyes, the cave is empty.

meulin, you call out into the darkness—

But there is no answer.

(She has vanished, but you are not alone.)

(Two ghosts now walk in your footsteps.)

 

sollux, you say on Trollian that night.

i need feferis help

5he5 a liitle bu5y riight now

There is death, all around you.

Thousands and thousands of screaming souls.

But you felt that glub.

(You died to that glub.)

There is nowhere _near_ enough.

when do you need her?

(You smile.)

(You have the best moirailsprit!)

in half a perigee

 

You spent two weeks on the shores of the great sea.

(Of Gl’bgolyb’s sea.)

You have more corpse parties than you know what to do with.

There are a lot of people at each of them—

You don’t even have to do them alone, but—

But.

Your shoulders are light.

(Your adventuring hat is now painted rust by your own blood.)

 

Twelve days later, you walk away from a roaring corpsefire and much merryment to go be by yourself and mope.

When you do, you find an adult troll, hanging from a gallow in the shallows of the shore.

He is hung up by his own violet guts, and you take a moment to bask in the grotesqueness of it all!

It competes with the example The Condesce made of Karkat, which is saying something!

He stares, violet eyes unblinking, at the horizon.

You float towards him, your feet skimming the water, until you are floating before him.

(You have to take another moment to appreciate the death on display here, because!)

(Wow!)

cronus, you say.

cronus, wake up.

His violet eyes flicker.

He blinks.

He tries to groan in pain, but whoever strung him up like this took his lungs with them, so he can’t.

this isnt real, you tell him.

wake up

His eyes flick down to you, and his lips twist, like he’s seen something unpleasant—

And then his violet eyes fade to white, and he crashes into the water before you.

(His chest whole and the gallows he had been hung from gone from existence.)

He doesn’t splash you with water, because the rules for when ghosts are corporeal and when they’re not are pretty arbitrary!

wwhat the fuck, he says, pushing himself up out of the water, thoroughly soaked.

get awway from me shitblood, he says.

i dont want to get any of you on me

You don’t get away from him, and continue to float right where you are.

He looks at you again, and the disgust drains out of his expression to be replaced by contempt.

do you knoww wwho i am, he says, in the way that highbloods say, when they’re going to hurt you, no matter what you say.

(Like they’re going to hurt you, and enjoy it.)

(It’s hard to take him seriously with that wobbly stutter, though!)

yep! you tell him.

then you should know _—_

youre cronus ampora!

The contempt in his face drains away, and he almost flinches.

(As you walk away from his ghost, vanishing beyond the beyonds—)

(You wonder if it’s a highblood thing.)

(To get so scared at the very mention of your wiggler name.)

(Marquise Mindfang, Orphaner Dualscar, The Grand Highblood, The Dolorosa.)

(You wonder how The Expatri8 would have reacted, if he had known his own name.)

(You wonder what The Sufferer will do, when you call him Kankri.)

 

The next day, Feferi catches your lusus in her arms when she drops back into the timestream—

And when she releases her, she’s as good as new.

(thank you, you say, and she smiles.)

(Of course! she says, as the broken blood vessels in her eyes heal.)

(Any time!)

(When she speaks, you can smell her tyrian blood in her breath.)

 

Sollux tries to get you to stay—

But you don’t want to.

So you don’t.

 

Three weeks later, in a ruin halfway across the world—

When you’re laying down to sleep at dawn—

A hooded troll pushes its way through the door, and out of the dawn sunlight.

hi kankri! you say.

The Signless pushes his hood from his face, and he smiles.

Hello, Aradia.

It’s so good to see you again.

 

(I remember you, he says.)

(I looked up to you—)

(The Lowblood Democrat—)

(The only troll below blue who founded our republic.)

 

He stays with you, until your molt starts.

Molting, you discover, is a deep, horrible sort of pain, in your bones and in your skull and in your blood.

It’s not as painful as the Gl’bgolyb’s glub had been—

But it’s close.

I know it hurts, he says, his hand in yours.

But I promise it will pass.

 

When you open your eyes again, and, for the first time, dying the world around you with your rust, he is gone.

(Three ghosts haunt the corners of your vision, now.)

Another troll stands in his place.

hi damara, you say.

She looks at you, rust on rust, and you know she is not dead.

aradia, she says to you, and you wonder where she learned your name.

Her eyes begin to flash, yellow and blue.

youre free, you say.

no, she says, and snaps your neck.

You crumble to the floor.

not

yet

She vanishes.

 

You open your eyes, scritch at raptormom’s neck, and the follow the rift in time that The Demoness left in her wake.

You let your psiioniics take hold of you—

The power of an adult’s psiioniics thrumming through your veins, and you catch her in your psiioniics the moment before she drives a wand through Tavros’s neck.

You are underwater, deep enough it is crushing your heart in your chest.

Tavros turns back to look at you, and his eyes are a faint, glowing white—

His face is grey, his expression flat, and dead.

You catch The Handmaid as she crashes into you, and tosses you seven million sweeps into the past.

The sun lights you on fire, the lava beneath you on fire again—

And you follow her back.

(The deep sea water feels wonderful on your burns.)

You pass Tavros, wave to him in passing (he doesn’t wave back), and then follow her fifty-three sweeps into the future.

Below you, Feferi stands, faced off against The Condesce, the crowd in the stadium around them a deafening cacophony.

The Demoness points her wand down at Feferi, and you catch it in your whip, jerking it up towards the sky.

She looks at you, and snarls.

why wont you die?

She points both of her wands at you, and lets loose a psiioniics blast that could wipe a mountain from existence.

But before it can reach you, it parts in a wave of red and blue, and blasts harmlessly around you, instead.

Her snarl escalates into a roar, and she vanishes once more.

You twiddle your fingers at Sollux, and he smiles back at you.

go get her, you hear him say.

You go get her.

 

You wrap an end of a whip around her horn as she tries to drive a wand through Sollux’s skull—

Banish her three days into the future as she tries snap Kanaya’s neck—

And drive her into the ground with your psionics when she tries to blow Karkat off of the face of Alternia.

Again, and again, and again, you follow her through the ages.

The Sufferer, The Orphaner, The Summoner—

The Condesce, Ponce, Spidermom—

Vriska, Feferi, Nepeta.

You follow her one last time, and you find yourself on the barren expanse of your world, long before anything lived on its surface.

 

we dont have to do this, you say to her.

please

She spreads her wands, and her lips twist in disgust.

think of everywhere we could go, damara!

all of the things we could do together!

youre free damara!

please

She blasts you with her psiioniics, and crashes you into a cliff face.

dont make me kill you, you say.

 

She rushes towards you, and you reach towards her, and _push_.

You fly towards her, you extend your hand—

You close it around her blood pusher as she falls back into time again, and rip it from her chest.

She stares at you as her blood pusher beats in your hand, and rust blood seeps from the hole in her chest cavity.

(It doesn’t spray out of it, cover you in blood, because her blood pusher is still in your hand.)

Her psiioniics fail, her eyes fading to rust, and when she tumbles from the air, you catch her in your arms.

You lower her to the ground, and lay her out to rest.

im sorry damara, you say.

i wish it didnt have to be this way

( _Why couldn’t you have been a little less evil?_ )

She glares at you—

Reaches towards you—

But you mend the rift she makes before she can toss you into the big bang.

(You take the hand she reached towards you in both of yours.)

fuck you with a rusty culling fork, she says.

fuck all of you

you deserve everything you got

i just wish i could have made you suffer a little more

She opens her mouth for one last invective, one last curse—

But her eyes dim, instead, and you place her heart back in her chest cavity.

 

(Her ghost rises from her body, her body whole—)

(For the first time, she is wrapped in rust, rather than green.)

(fuck you, she says, one last time.)

(goodbye damara, you say.)

(And, just like that, The Handmaid is gone.)

 

You give her a corpse party, there on the barren surface of ancient alternia—

Under a purple moon with no green sibling.

goodbye damara, you repeat again, to the empty air.

i hope whatever waits  for you is better for you than we were

 

You follow her rifts back into the present, repairing the tears she made in the fabric of time.

(You wave at your friends as you pass them, and most of them don’t wave back at you.)

(On second thought, though, maybe you should have washed your hand of her blood before coming back!)

You step out into the ruins you molted in at the same time you stepped out of it, and scritch at raptormom’s chin, again.

It’s fine.

Everything’s fine.

You bow your head to your lusus’s head, and you cry, just a little bit.

 

A perigee and two ruins later, you hear a faint rustling from behind you—

And then a faint whistling—

And then your side splits with pain.

You look back at the door of the ruin, and there is a subjuggulator standing there.

A cerulean blood stands at her side.

Cerulean tendrils curl their way into your mind, and delay you by just enough you can’t stop the arrow that cuts through the air between them, and drives itself through your heart.

(They are not juveniles.)

(They are adults.)

(What are adults doing on alternia?)

You fall onto your back as the subjuggulator approaches you, and the world begins to go dark.

By your side, your lusus hisses.

She leaps over your body, towards the subjuggulator, and, with the last of your power, you raise your hand, and—

 _Push_.

 

You awaken, sometime later, only to take another arrow to the heart.

You try to spark your psiioniics, but then a club crashes into your skull, and you fall back into darkness.

 

You awaken, sometime later still, to The Condesce’s smiling face.

There is a 2x3dent already impaling your heart—

not yet, she says.

 

The third time you open your eyes you don’t immediately die.

The world is tinted blue and red, and, for the first time in your life, you cannot feel your own psiioniics.

Your hands are chained above your head, and The Condesce stands before you.

hows that eel, bitch

It’s pretty uncomfortable, to be honest!

You don’t love it!

Behind The Condesce is a mess of tentacles, and, in its center, the broken and withered form of The Helmsman.

His horns spark weakly with red and blue psiioniics, and his body twitches as the tentacles writhe beneath his skin.

i think you mighta saved my ass from the demoness so imma be hella merciful

and give you two options

you either serve me, do my fuckin bidding

or i fuckin krill you until you stop coming back

You try to move, try to tell her just where she can shove her bullshit offer—

But when you do—

Your body doesn’t listen to you.

There is a tightness in your head—

Not like the cerulean tendrils, but—

oh right, she says.

you dont got a choice

Something around your head tightens on your skull and—

OBEY

SUBMIT

CONSUME

The Condesce smiles.

lets start by you thankin me for  my mercy

OBEY

SUBMIT

CONSUME

 

**> ** **Aradia:** **Be the Handmaid, Reborn**

 

No.

OBEY

SUBMIT

CONSUME

You are nobody’s handmaid.

OBEY

SUBMIT

CONSUME

You are nobody’s slave.

OBEY

SUBMIT

CONSUME

you are—

i am the UNBROKEN LOWBLOOD, you say.

and you will not break me

Your cuffs crumble around your hands, (old as time) and your wings spread behind you.

She is already halfway towards you—2x3dent pointed at your chest—

But she isn’t fast enough.

You freeze the trident, and _push_ her.

The trident stops and she vanishes.

You raise a hand to your face, and you peel off the goggles that have been welded to your face.

Rust blood pours down your face.

OBEY

SUBMIT

CONSUME

You do not bother with the headband she is trying to use to control you.

It has no power over you.

You take her 2x3dent, snap it into two 3dents, and then reach forward and rip her bloodpusher from her chest when she falls back into the timestream.

She coughs tyrian on your face, and you smile at her, with all of your blunt, herbivore teeth.

hi meenah, you say.

its so nice to you again

You crush her bloodpusher in front of her face, covering you both in tyrian—

But she doesn’t fall.

She doesn’t falter.

(The hole in her chest heals.)

She smiles at you through bloody teeth.

shoulda run when you had da chance bitch

you aint gonna get another

You freeze her, but she doesn’t stay frozen.

Sollux’s sign glows on her forehead, and you barely managed to deflect his lasers into a wall.

You run, dodging through the ship’s corridors, but she’s faster than you.

A Serket’s cerulean tendrils reach into your mind—

A Captor’s psiioniics blast holes in the ship—

A Megido’s psiioniics try and hold you still—

And through it all, The Condesce charges after you, the broken halves of her 2x3dent in each hand.

You reach a dead end, and she pins you against it with your own psiioniics.

imma enjoy this, she says.

 

She advances towards you, through the twists in her own timeline, bouncing her a split second forward and backward through time, speeding her up and slowing her down.

You freeze her, and she breaks free—

(You try to throw her ten years in the future, but she resists.)

She raises a half of her 2x3dent, and—

You lower your hands to the ship wall behind you, and _push_.

Her Imperious Battleship vanishes from around you, and The Condesce hesitates.

da fuck _—_

You grab ahold of her, and _push_ —

(This time, she does not resist in time—)

And she vanishes.

 

You take a deep breath of vacuum, and sigh.

You raise your hand—

OBEY

SUBMIT

CONSUME

—and pull the headband from your skin.

All around you is the (psychic) screams of dying trolls.

You debate, for a moment, about leaving them there.

Leave them to die, in the hard vacuum of space.

But you don’t.

You grab ahold of them all—

(All save one—)

And you _push_.

And then—

Then there’s only one.

 

You raise your hand, and your psiioniics draws him towards you.

The Helmsman hangs before you, his limbs a bloody mess where the tentacles had been.

He is dying.

Not just from the vacuum he can’t breathe—

Not just from the yellow blood pouring out of his body—

But also from the tyrian spark that no longer keeps his too-old blood pusher running.

Dying quickly, too, you can feel death coming for him, every second bringing it closer and closer and closer—

He deserves to die.

You raise your hands to his face, tuck your fingers under his goggles.

But he deserves to die, free.

You remove his goggles, and the world shatters with a psychic scream of centuries of repression.

It echoes in your _everything_.

It’s like Gl’bgolyb’s glub, all over again.

You are bleeding rust from your everywhere, his scream echoing in your bones and your eyes and your ears and this time—

This time, you know you won’t be coming back.

You smile at him, through the haze of rust around the edges of your sight, and slowly (brokenly), he smiles back.

His yellow eyes dim, and then he stands from his broken, and twisted body, whole once more.

thank5, he says.

And then—

iim 5orry

bye mituna, you say.

bye lowblood, he says, because that’s your name, now.

(At least, for a little bit longer.)

There is a whisper, and then he slips away, beyond the horrorterrors, into the realm you will soon rule.

And then, for the first time in half a sweep, you are alone.

(No ghosts haunt at your footsteps.)

(No ghosts breathe in your breath.)

 

With the last of your strength, you reach out towards Sollux.

He’s coming towards you as fast as he can, which is pretty fast!

Eating up the light years like they’re nothing!

But he won’t be fast enough.

The Imperious Battleship was just too far away!

How inconsiderate!

You can’t help but giggle to yourself and the inconsiderateness of it all.

(Your not bleeding as much, anymore.)

(Not because you’re healing, but because you don’t have much blood left to bleed.)

It’s hard to think, hard to move, but you speak to Sollux, anyways.

 

bye sollux, you say to him, across the light years.

5end me back, he says.

what? you ask.

AA, 5end me back

plea5e

You blink at the stars above you.

tell feferi to make her pay for me sollux, you say

AA!

You smile.

no!

 

**tick**

 

**tock**

 

**tick**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) (hehehehehe)
> 
> (Also, that imgur link actually works, if you remove all the trolls, but it uhhh, just points at a gif of a cat. I think it's cute.)


	3. The Summoner, Reborn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You are Tavros Nitram (PAGE of BREATH).
> 
> You appear to not be a cat anymore, which is, uhh, pretty good!
> 
> Or dead.
> 
> You’re also not dead.
> 
> That’s also pretty neat.
> 
> You like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trolls use imperial units because of course they do. :)
> 
> (also, the metric system is black magic and i do not understand it)
> 
> tw: vomit
> 
> EDIT: So, uhhh, first time I posted this, I posted a version of this without all the characters tags so it was uhhh, mildly unreadable. You know, just a little. It's fixed now, sorry to anyone who saw it in its garbo state.

> Be The Summoner, Reborn

 

You are Tavros Nitram (PAGE of BREATH).

You appear to not be a cat anymore, which is, uhh, pretty good!

Or dead.

You’re also not dead.

That’s also pretty neat.

You like that.

 

You heave yourself out of your recuperacoon, and set yourself on your feet before you remember your feet don’t work.

Thankfully, your feet don’t remember that either, and they hold you up just fine.

This might not be so bad, you think.

Last you remember, you were either half cat (and allergic to yourself) or (sort of) leading an army of ghosts against an invincible demon.

You guess you would have hoped your reward would be something other than Alternia, but, uh… 

Apparently not?

 

Your hivetop lights up, across the room, trollian flashing—

 

AG: It’s not like I care or anything.

AG: 8ut you’re not dead, right?

AG: Still you’re incredibly pathetic self?

AG: Maybe two of your incredibly pathetic selves?

 

You’re suddenly a lot less excited about being back on Alternia.

(Interacting with Vriska can do that to a person.)

You debate responding to Vriska, but uh… 

You don’t want to.

You really don’t.

 

Vriska decides for you what you want, because that is a thing she likes to do.

Cerulean tendrils worm their way into your mind, your chest tightens—

You try and fight against it, even though you know it’s useless.

You’ve tried before.

You’ve failed before.

(You liked your legs.)

(You’re going to miss them.)

You blink, and then the tendrils in your mind are gone, like they were never there.

 

AG: Don’t 8e such a t8l, Tavros.

 

You stare at your Trollian for a little while.

Vriska opens a memo, and you participate.

Almost all of your friends are there.

Almost all of your friends are definitely alive again.

The remaining ones are probably still alive, and just ignoring Trollian!

You have about ten minutes to believe that—

Until the image of Karkat’s broken body is burned into your retinas (there is so so much blood), and culling drones are knocking at your door.

 

You try run, but they catch you.

You try and fight them, and, uh—

You win.

You kill them.

(They are the first trolls you’ve ever killed.)

(If drones even count as trolls.)

(With their yellow blood on your hands, their twisted metal bodies on your lance—)

(They feel like they do.)

 

You get sick.

A lot.

Chunky yellow puke in chunky yellow blood—

And it’s almost like you didn’t get sick at all.

 

(There’s yellow blood everywhere.)

(On the floor, the walls—)

(In your hair, on your horns—)

(In your recuperacoon.)

 

You run.

 

(You leave your hive not because you’re scared—)

(Even though you are.)

(You leave because it will never be clean again.)

(Look at you—)

(Half-leader of an army of the dead into a suicide mission only you survived.)

(You’re the bravest, the strongest.)

(It’s you.)

 

You calm down.

Twelve troll miles from your hive.

On a cliff.

(Not the one Vriska tossed you off of.)

(A different cliff.)

You’re sitting on it, legs dangling over the edge—

(Kicking your legs, because you can do that now—)

And you ask yourself—

What would Rufio do?

(What would The Summoner do?)

 

You don’t know.

You don’t know who The Summoner was.

(Vriska knew that, maybe Aradia.)

(Not you.)

And Rufio—

Rufio doesn’t want anything.

Rufio doesn’t exist.

 

But you—

You exist.

There may be no Angel coming for you—

No invincible God threatening to destroy the entire universe—

But this is Alternia.

And you have an Empress, who would have killed you.

Drones, that kill trolls like the troll you had been, every day.

You drop down the cliff, and wash the yellow blood from your lance.

You don’t know what an army of trolls could do, if you raised one on Alternia.

(But it’s better than nothing.)

You’ve done this before.

(You can do it again.)

 

Your voice carries, on the wind.

You whisper into the wind, and the wind whispers for you.

Into the ears of every troll it can find.

You speak, and, slowly, they come.

(You are The Summoner, reborn.)

 

(mY NAME IS, uHH, TAVROS NITRAM, you say)

 

First, a yellowblood—

Blinded by her own psionics.

(Her name is Atarka Temurl.)

 

(tOGETHER, i THINK WE CAN, uHH, mAKE A BETTER WORLD,)

 

A jadeblood—

Who has lost his lusus.

(His name is Espern Horran.)

 

(tOGETHER, wE DON’T HAVE TO BE SCARED,)

 

A rustblood—

With nothing wrong with him at all.

(His name is Jundon Lokail.)

 

(nO ONE ELSE HAS TO BE CULLED,)

 

A ceruleanblood, a brownblood, a violetblood.

(Morlai Oketra, Hazore Tefirn, Inojin Lionas.)

 

(tOGETHER, wE CAN PROTECT EACH OTHER,)

 

You remember their names.

Their lusus’s names.

Their friend’s names.

You remember their hatchdates.

They look at you like no one’s ever done that for them before—

Because no one ever has.

The culling drones come—

But you stop them.

(Together.)

(Atarka may be blind, but she can block a drone’s psionics just fine.)

When it is over, you are not the only one covered in yellow blood.

When it is over, you do not have to wash yourself alone.

 

More and more they come.

To what you never tell anyone else you are calling Troll Neverland—

Where you’re safe from culling.

Adults, now.

(Golgar Ijinal, Sekmet Jalice, Polain Jiante.)

More and more.

You learn their names.

You were able to remember a thousand different versions of the same troll.

(Knew when they died.)

(Knew how they died.)

(Who they loved, who they hated—)

(Who killed them, how their timeline was doomed.)

This is nothing.

 

There are ten of you, a hundred of you, a thousand of you.

It has been three perigees, and there are four thousand, one hundred and thirty of you.

Every color (save two).

Rust yellow brown olive jade teal cerulean blue indigo and violet.

 

Then—

Kanaya comes.

Walking out of the air.

Hello Tavros, she says.

It Looks Like You’re Doing Well For Yourself.

i, uHH, wOULDN’T PUT IT THAT WAY,

bUT YOU ARE ALSO,

lOOKING GOOD,

i MEAN, uHH,

nOT IN, uHH, 

a WEIRD WAY,

i MEAN IN A PLATONIC WAY,

yOU LOOK,

wELL,

 

(She doesn’t.)

(She doesn’t look good.)

(She doesn’t sound good.)

(She looks like she did, when the matriorb was destroyed.)

(You’ve met versions of her that never came back to life, after Eridan killed her—)

(And they looked like she does now.)

(She looks broken.)

 

The trolls come, and they come.

You are not a village, you do not fit in a hive, you are a city.

A battleship is called down upon you, but it is too late—

You are TEN THOUSAND STRONG, and you DRAG IT FROM THE SKIES.

 

(Kanaya starts smiling again.)

(She meets Olikon Benila and talks about sewing and fabrics and red skirts.)

(She meets Polint Nijahu and discusses chainsaw maintenance.)

 

Five perigees in, and Varila Onjial (indigoblood, no lusus, lacking a left leg, meaner than a sack of grubs) stops—

A knife half an inch from your exposed back—

A familiar cerulean circle in the center of her forehead—

Frozen in place.

Honestly.

It’s like you can’t do anything without me.

Why are you such a fucking wiggler, Tavros?

You thank her, because she saved your life, and when you do—

She looks at you like she sometimes did, when you thought you were matesprits.

(And you almost forget everything she’s ever done to you.)

(But not quite.)

After she guts Varila, indigo up to her elbow—

She doesn’t leave.

 

(Vriska meets another troll, named Vraska Carbun—)

(An olive blood, who shares her love of treasure and pirates and adventure.)

 

Perigees slip by.

You still speak on the winds.

Your city is surrounded by lusii of every color, guarding you against the waves of drones that come down upon you on a regular basis.

(You are safe.)

 

Kanaya slips into hives, jails, helms, walking in that way she walks—

Between the cracks of the world.

 

Vriska digs information out of highblood brains—

Opens locks with unwilling hands.

Stays the hands of a dozen assassins.

 

The bright season reaches its peak.

You are safe, you think.

(You are a fool.)

You are on the sea, your people at your back, and you speak on the winds.

i THINK THAT,

wE CAN JUST LET THE CONDESCE COME,

wE CAN TAKE HER,

 

(You’re wrong.)

 

You don’t need to talk about Gl’bgloyb’s glub, do you?

You don’t need to talk about how it killed you.

How it killed everyone in your little neverland below jade?

(Because of you?)

No.

You’re, uhh,

Pretty sure you really don’t.

 

You awaken in the shade, in the dirt.

Surrounded by the dead, no living troll in sight.

(You know all of their names—)

(Jiknal, Pailty, Onilka—)

(Too many to count, too many to recite here, now.)

Somewhere off in the distance, you hear the sound of weeping.

Dozens of trolls, weeping over their dead.

There is no one weeping over you.

(Before you is Tinkerbull’s bloody body.)

(You try to weep, but you find you cannot.)

 

You are dressed up in bright blue, brown wings growing out of your back—

Because apparently you’re a God, even though you don’t remember becoming one.

(Apparently getting ten thousand trolls killed doesn’t seem to count as _just_.)

 

You lift yourself off the ground, out of the brown pool of your own blood, and you leave your fake neverland behind.

There is no one to see you go.

 

You dive into the sea.

You have no gills, but you are Tavros Nitram (PAGE of BREATH), and when you open your mouth to breathe, air finds its way into your lungs, anyways.

You fly, down and down and down.

Dawn comes, but you are too deep to feel its searing heat.

Down, down, and down some more, until it is as black as night, and only one pinprick of white light in the distance.

 

You stand before her.

A murderer, ten-thousand-fold.

Vraska, Otarka, Lokina, Komlni—

You will make her pay.

 

She opens her white eyes, opens her massive white beak, but before she can speak—

You reach out with your psionics—

Into her mind, open and waiting for you, and—

She reaches back.

(You try to stop, try to pull back.)

(But it’s too late.)

 

Her presence in your mind is nothing like Vriska’s—

It has no color—

Has no intent—

No will.

(And it drains color, intent, and will from you.)

 

She drips with an otherworldly otherness, warping your pan around her—

The black water around fills with brown blood but you do not see it.

There is a grey film, covering your eyes, dripping from your skin.

 

Your hand moves, but it is not you who is moving it.

You speak—

Fnlthg mlp’ai l’rg lk’nkg

But it is not you speaking.

You drown in black slime, choking its way down your throat—

The breath no longer answering your call.

H’tikl jtdckal lopkct, you continue gurgling through the sludge .

It is choking you, killing you, but you do not die.

The water around you is more blood than water, but your blood is no longer brown.

It is black.

Your vision goes dim—

Darker—

Then black.

 

You open your eyes.

You are Tkla’m Nlapmd (PAGE of BREATH).

T’t aklotn plianek’l lkpme, Gl’bgolyb commands in a whisper through your bones, through the grey tendrils in your brain.

Kn’l lpk’a bnle tka, you say.

You reach out, with your psionics.

Beyond the comforting unspeakable blackness all around you, and out of the sea.

Lusii drop their grubs, push away their charges.

They leave their hives, their nests, and walk towards the sea.

(You are The Summoner, reborn.)

 

One by one, ten by ten, hundred by hundred, they slip into the ocean, and drag themselves down and down and down.

They can’t all make it, but the dead are carried by those who can.

The water around you swirls with a rainbow of blood, and the water shivers with G’lbgolyb’s contentment.

 

Behind you, there is a disturbance, and when you turn back, there are two trolls you don’t recognize, fighting in the bloody water.

One of them looks at you, like you should know who it is supposed to be.

They vanish.

One of them returns.

It wiggles a hand at you.

You stare at it, until it leaves.

L’k tnalk rtkal, Gl’bgolyb says.

Nkj jlak okedt’l, you respond.

 

Another troll comes, later.

Past the train of lusii, its hair a mass of tendrils.

Its face is twisted into a grotesque mask.

)(OW COULD YOU? it screams in the water, and you do not understand the nonsensical clicks and purrs of her speech.

It does not see you.

It does not look at you.

(You are hidden in a sea of rainbow blood.)

Bnkl kluc cklok’t, Gl’bgolyb responds and her voice is soft.

They continue speaking, and the troll continues to scream.

The troll does not see you.

It leaves in a storm of furious bubbles, and does not wiggle a hand at you.

 

(The lusii keep coming.)

(They keep dragging themselves into the water, killing themselves in the swim.)

 

You cannot see the sun.

You cannot tell when the days pass.

When the seasons pass.

(You do not care.)

 

The lusii keep coming.

You do not feed on their flesh, because the black sludge in your lungs is all you need.

Klank’l m’lj a’lket, you say.

Njl acm’l kel’c, Gl’bgolyb says, one of her closer tentacles wrapping itself around your neck, and lovingly breaking it.

 

An unknown amount of time later, your body is wracked with pain, pain like you’ve never felt, because you’ve felt very little.

(It passes.)

 

There is another troll, sometime after that.

really, it says in its incomprehensible mishmash of wet slapping noises and squelches.

how are you evven still alive down here

G’t mock’l, you say, but it doesn’t leave.

shit tav

what the fuck happened to you

G’t mock’l, you repeat, and this time, it does leave.

You try to take control the lusus it rides on, but there is nothing there.

The lusus is empty.

(The stream of lusii, you realize, has stopped.)

(Lusii no longer respond to your call.)

 

Gl’bgolyb slips a tentacle around your ankle pleadingly.

K’l hgnyr, she says, her voice weak ( _hungry_ ), and you nod.

You do not know how long it has been since she ate, but you know it has been quite a while indeed.

You lift yourself from the ocean, up and up and up and up until you can see the moon, and then up some more.

You break the surface, and into the open air.

It feels unpleasant, against your damp skin.

Drying you in a way you know you shouldn’t be try.

The grey slime that is your skin drips off of you, and into the ocean below.

Fuck, you hear, in an incomprehensible squelch behind you.

You turn, and yet another troll is floating behind you, bright yellow wings behind its back.

We thought you were dead, Tavros.

Its got its face all twisted up, grey skin folded into long creases up and down its face.

You ignore it.

i fuckin told you

Shut up, Eridan.

 

They continue squelching at each other, and you ignore them.

On the shore, there is a lusus.

A cat lusus, its eyes olive.

You reach out to it, but it is empty.

There is nothing inside of it.

It is an empty husk.

But it still moves.

(It can still die.)

 

The fairy troll grabs ahold of your arm as you pass it—

And drops your arm with a hiss of pain at the contact.

Don’t fucking ignore me, Tavros! it smacks and garbles at you.

You try to ignore it, try to continue towards the cat lusus on the shore, but the troll moves before you, once more.

What happened to you, Tavros? it smacks and clicks and spews.

Ym’l mock’l, you say, but it doesn’t move.

G8d, it says.

Ym’l mock’l, you say one more time.

It just stares at you, its face still all twisted up and incomprehensible and gray.

You gave it two chances.

You equip your lance.

We’ve already done this, it says, equipping nothing at all.

You know how this ends.

 

You strife.

(Something niggles at the back of your mind.)

(A memory, of—)

( _Her_.)

She tries to snatch something away from you, but whatever she is trying to take—

You never had any of it to begin with.

She tries to dance around your strikes, but the wind belongs to _you_ , and it turns against her, throwing it into your lance.

She is bloody, streaked with cerulean, and her yellow eyes bore into your own.

Ym’l mock’l, you say.

She does not move from your path.

 

Cerulean tendrils try and latch themselves into your mind, but they cannot overtake the black grey tentacles already there.

You launch at her again, and, for the first time, she doesn’t try and dodge.

(A memory flashes in your mind, in color, with none of the grey film that is all that you can remember.)

You run _Vriska_ straight through—

And she latches onto your face with her claws, and bellows—

Wake up Tavros!

The cerulean tendrils that had danced ineffectually on the edges of your mind are suddenly inside your pan, curled around your spine, and under the black sludge in your throat.

There is pain in your everything, the grey curtain on your vision flickering in and out and back in again.

You hack, and cough and hack, the black sludge from your throat mixing the cerulean blood staining her bright orange pajamas.

Gl’bgolyb screams in your pan as her tentacles are torn from your mind, leaving bloody brown tracks in their wake as you hack and cough and hack and cough until you are coughingbrown and not black _._

You close your eyes, and—

 

You open your eyes.

You are Tavros Nitram (PAGE of BREATH).

In front of you is a dying Vriska Serket (THIEF of LIGHT).

A dying Vriska Serket hanging off of your lance, dying like you died, a lifetime ago.

Vriska coughs her bright (cold) cerulean blood in your face, her face locked in a scowl.

You worthless p8ce of shit, she says.

She releases you, and her grey hands are burned white.

She heaves herself off of your lance, and then drops a white hand to the hole that is now in her stomach.

Can’t you do anything right?

And then—

And then you _remember_.

(There is someone screaming.)

(Screaming their lungs raw.)

(You do not realize it is you.)

 

Get a hold of yourself.

You jerk your head out of your brown-stained hands, and look up at a fully healed Vriska.

Behind her, Eridan stands awkwardly, muttering to himself.

fuckin fake, he might be saying.

We got shit do, Tavros.

Irons in the fire.

You are lost, but Vriska doesn’t give you a chance to breathe—

(To wonder at how she is still alive—)

She grabs you by the back of your neck instead.

Look at me, she says.

Do you remem8er me?

yES, you say, and your voice scratches in your throat, dry and painful.

Do you remem8er what happened to The Safeguard?

(To Vraska, Otarka, Loknia, Mklein—)

yES,

You taste your own brown blood.

Well I’m going to make sure that never happens again.

All I need you to do is keep her quiet.

i CAN’T, you croak.

i TRIED THAT,

tHAT’S HOW I—

8luh 8luh 8luh

I don’t have time for your stupid self-deprecating bullshit.

No one can do it but you.

She’s immune to me, but not to you.

If you don’t do this, no one can.

I’ll protect your pathetic pan.

All you need to do is hold her still.

 

You agree.

But—

But—

You just—

Can’t.

 

You can still hear her, whispering—

K’lm jilank’t.

Come back to me, she is saying to you.

Nolkt njkaki.

I miss you.

(And behind her, so many more voices than hers.)

(In a deafening, enticing cacophony.)

(Kjal ijolp plent nqdo nj’nk, they say.)

(Come to us, and we will give you everything you desire.)

 

You can feel Gl’bgolyb inside of you, and you haven’t even tried to reach out to her, yet.

i CAN’T, you say.

You have to.

i CAN’T,

Tavros—

bUT YOU COULD,

Vriska is silent.

You look up at her, and her yellow eyes are on you.

iF YOU WERE ME,

One more moment of uncomfortable silence, and then she turns, and looks back at Eridan, floating on his lusus behind you.

You r8dy, Eridan?

oh yeah no big deal—

just kill a fuckin horrorterror

hope she doesnt melt all our pans with her dying throes

ive never seen tavs stupid psionics

sounds fake to—

I thought you were the Orphaner, Eridan.

All you need to do is make one last Orphan.

A moment of silence, and then—

Eridan decaptachalogues a gun that is not Ahab’s crosshairs–

(A gun almost as large as he is—)

And he points it at the sea.

Silence.

im ready, he says.

got her in my sights

 

Vriska’s hands, now grey, and not white, come up to your face.

She clasps your head in her claws, and her vision eightfold bores into your own.

Her symbol appears on her forehead.

Your limbs go limp, and your psionics move beyond your control.

Anklt mikl! Gl’bgolyb says to you.

(You’re back!)

Jnk kla nt’g.

(I knew you’d come back to me!)

Then—

Your psionics seep into her mind, and she—

Jnk’l hn—

(What are you—)

She falls into a muffled, gagged silence—

Her beaks clamp closed.

Anyt8me now!

Alternia shakes with an earsplitting roar, the ocean and splits, and your pan splits with Gl’bgolyb’s broken, muffled scream.

But…

It’s not enough.

You can feel Gl’bgolyb’s pain, her agony.

You can feel the tyrian in the water.

But it is not enough.

You feel her heal.

Again!

you fuckin kidding me, Eridan says, but—

He fires again.

Pain.

Tyrian.

White flesh, knitting itself back together.

Again, don’t stop!

This time, he doesn’t protest.

He just fires.

Again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

(And again and again and again.)

White tentacles lash out at you form the ocean, streaked with tyrian—

But they freeze before they touch either of you, quivering as—

_crash_

_crash_

_crash_

_crash_

_crash_.

Eridan fires over and over and over again.

(It doesn’t matter.)

(It won’t be enough.)

(Gl’bgolyb does not stop healing.)

You can look at nothing but Vriska’s face as cerulean veins burst in her eyes, and cerulean sweat beads on her forehead.

I can’t do this forever, Eridan!

Fucking kill her!

the fuck you think im doin vris

she wont fuckin die

Vriska falters, her yellow eyes unfocusing.

Her symbol in her forehead stutters.

(She won’t make it.)

 

(Jnk’lp kjneo ajnwi, says the deafening cacophony, their voices like Gl’bgolyb’s, but not quite the same.)

(Come to us.)

(Juenapl kne’a inj’l.)

(We will give you the power you need.)

 

You drop, in the air.

Vriska’s wings don’t quite hold you up, anymore.

Her hands fall from your face.

 

(Jnk’lp kjneo ajnwi.)

 

oKAY, you say.

(Except what comes out of your mouth isn’t oKAY.)

(It’s Jn’lant.)

 

(You reach out, further than you’ve ever reached before—)

(And the furthest realms reach back.)

 

You push Vriska away as a grey film falls back over your eyes—

As black sludge once again fills your throat—

As grey tentacles once again wrap themselves through your everything.

 

Your psionics fall back under your own power—

(Under power far greater than your own—)

And Gl’bgolyb’s tentacles all freeze in place.

 

You turn back to the sea beneath you—

More tyrian than blue, now—

You equip your lance.

 

Nj’la, she says, in silent plea.

(Please.)

i’M SORRY, you try and say, and it comes out—

Jlt’ae.

 

Your lance glows with an angry grey, and the wind spins around your its long blade.

You are Tavros Nitram—

(Tkla’m Nlapmd—)

And with a head full of horrorterrors, a mouth full of the sludge of the furthest ring—

You are, for the first time, a fully realized Page of Breath.

 

You raise your lance, and when you drive it down—

The ocean splits with a scream all the way down to the ocean floor.

Your eyes meet with Gl’bgolyb’s for the barest of moments before your lance drills into her.

She screams in your mind, but it does not hurt you.

She struggles against your control as your lance of the sharpest wind pierces her hide, and then pierces the ocean floor beneath her, but she does not break free.

Her white flesh tries to knit itself back together—

Her tyrian heart tries to keep beating around the tornado drilling through her—

But it can’t.

And, after one pump—

Two pumps—

Three—

It stops.

(Gl’bgolyb goes silent.)

The ocean crashes back into place, and you lose control over her, because you have no power over the dead.

 

On the shore, there is a horrible scream of agony, and when you turn, past where Vriska is pushing Eridan off of her, and you see Feferi.

Goggles torn from her face, kneeling in the tyrian ocean—

Screaming as tyrian tears stream down her face.

 

Tavros, Vriska says, and you turn to her.

vRISKA, you try and say, but instead you say—

Vlka’tn.

Her Cerulean tendrils reach towards you.

nOT THIS TIME, you say to the tendrils, and, in your mind, it is not warped into a bloodfester tongue.

Come back, Tavros, she says.

i, uHHH,

dON’T THINK I CAN DO THAT,

vRISKA,

nOT THIS TIME,

(You were not taken.)

(You gave yourself.)

(You can feel the importance of that, in your newly black bone marrow, and the black sludge in your lungs.)

That’s not good enough, Vriska says.

She tries to move towards you, but is stopped by a solid wall of air.

(Jnall’p nia’le, the deafening cacophony say.)

(kILL HER, sUCK THE MARROW FROM HER BONES, sCOOP THE SPONGE FROM HER PAN, mAKE HER BEG YOU FOR—)

(This time, they speak in your voice.)

You turn away from her.

(You can’t be near her, anymore.)

(You don’t think you can be near anyone, anymore.)

Tavros! she yells at your back.

Your stupid fuck8ng Neverland still stands, they’re still alive!

You stop.

You look back at the shore.

It's empty, but beyond it, the wind carries voices to you.

Thousands of voices you know by heart.

(Atarka and Jundon and Hazore and—)

Thousands more you don’t.

(But, in those voices, there are thousands of voices that you know are missing.)

(Jeskan and Likano and Inajek and Vraska and—)

They’re w8ing for you, Tavros!

It’s fucking pathetic bullshit because we all know I’m a better leader than you are—

But they still want you back!

You turn, and you look at her.

You’re The Summoner, aren’t you?

Live up to your name, Tavros.

 

The wind curls around you, ready to take your words, ready to whisper on all of the winds.

Gl’bgolyb is gone.

Neverland can stand again.

 

> Tavros: Be The Summoner, Reborn

 

nO, you say.

(Jn’l.)

You are not The Summoner, reborn.

You have killed Lusii by the thousand—ten thousand—

Too many to count—

Too many dead grubs, dead juveniles for you to comprehend.

(The bloodfester tongues that you chose.)

(The black sludge that is all that you have left for blood.)

You are—

i AM THE ELDRITCH ORPHANER,

(Jna’ls iwne’l ENNLIGTN WENVJLKR.)

aND WHAT I’VE DONE CAN’T BE UNDONE,

(Jna’ls iwne’l enigtn wenjlkr.)

The wind, curling around you, takes your eldritch whispers, and spreads them across the land—

(To curse the grubs you didn’t quite manage to kill with the your stubborn, bloodfester throes.)

You turn away from Vriska, just like you did, a lifetime ago.

This time, you don’t flip her off as you go.

Tavros!

Are you not even going to f8cking try?

Gr8w up, st8p being such a wiggler—

Can’t you see what I did for—

The wind takes her words, garbles them into an incomprehensible mass of squelching, hissing and clicking.

The wind swallows you, and you’re gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	4. The Helmsman, Reborn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You are Sollux Captor (MAGE of DOOM).
> 
> You wake up, and the yellow strings that you had been free from since you died—
> 
> Have wrapped themselves around you, once more.
> 
> They draw you forward, like a puppet on a thousand strings.
> 
> Forward, forward—
> 
> Until the end you’ve always known is coming.
> 
> (You are The Helmsman, reborn.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: self harm

> Be The Helmsman, Reborn

 

You are Sollux Captor (MAGE of DOOM).

You wake up, and the yellow strings that you had been free from since you died—

Have wrapped themselves around you, once more.

They draw you forward, like a puppet on a thousand strings.

Forward, forward—

Until the end you’ve always known is coming.

(You are The Helmsman, reborn.)

 

The doomed are singing their chorus of agony in a deafening cacophony around you, once more.

You didn’t miss them.

(Except when you did.)

(Except when sometimes the world was so deafeningly silent, and Aradia was off doing her thing, and you’d never felt so alone.)

 

Now, you are back on Alternia, and the whisperings and mutterings of the chorus of the doomed have returned to you.

And, once again—

You know the voices in the song.

Aradia.

Feferi.

Karkat.

(Terezi, Vriska, Eridan, Nepeta, Equius, Tavros, Kanaya.)

(Not You.)

(Not the fucking clown.)

They are all going to die.

(Their doom is fast approaching.)

(Your helmsblock is approaching, with them.)

(The yellow strings that bind your every limb pull you closer, and closer.)

 

And then—

Suddenly—

All ten of their voices go silent.

The world has changed.

(The future has changed.)

You did not change it.

 

You are almost happy, but Alternia is happy to correct you—

Happy to remind you that is a hellhole of the grandest proportions.

KK, you say, despite yourself.

There are yellow tears on your cheeks.

You pull your hands against the yellow strings binding you in place, a bury your face in them.

you liived through the game

how could you diie now?

 

You don’t have time to mourn.

The drones come for you, but really—

They’re not even worth mentioning.

(Drones are what _weak_ yellowbloods are turned into.)

By the end of it, your tears are indistinguishable from the yellow blood of the drones covering you.

 

Karkat died with no warning, without his voice integrating itself into the chorus.

You won’t let it happen again.

(The yellow strings around you pull you forward, forward, forward—)

(Your actions predestined—)

(Already determined.)

 

You chase Aradia down by her psiioniics, calling out to you like a beacon—

(Carrying your lusus behind you like the deadweight he is.)

She is not dead, wonderfully and beautifully and vibrantly alive.

There is a maroon string trailing from her chest—

(Leading forward, and forward, and further forward still.)

(At its end, there is no helmsblock.)

(Aradia will die, Unbroken.)

She dances with it, like it doesn’t guide her every move, like it isn’t binding her into a future that she can’t chose.

She dances with it like an old friend.

(Like she once did, with you.)

(You’d like to dance with her, again.)

It has been two perigees since you saw her last, and oh, you missed her.

(Trailing from her left hand it a string of interwoven red and white threads—)

(A perfect match to a matching string, on your right hand.)

hey sollux! she says.

(And you don’t cry.)

(Not even when she holds you, and scratches softly, comfortingly, at your back.)

(You can’t stop.)

(Not yet.)

 

You chase Feferi down by following the stench of doom of the being that will one day end the entire troll race.

(The being that has already ended the troll race once.)

Feferi is the only troll you’ve ever known bound more tightly than you are.

You can barely see her face through the tyrian string wrapped around her everything.

With her every movement, every smile, she strains against it, strains against her own inevitable end.

(She is The )(eiress—)

(She is not The Condesce, reborn.)

(She cannot win.)

And fuck if it isn’t the most pitiful thing you’ve ever seen.

She smiles at you through the tyrian mass all around her, through her own encroaching demise.

)(i sollux! she says.

You can do no more than wave, because you are holding your breath, down on the ocean floor.

You wave to her with your left hand, where her red and white string is tied.

The other end has attached itself to her right pinkie, and she wiggles it at you, sometimes.

(Because she knows what it means to you.)

From her left pinkie is a string of the purest white, white like you’ve never seen before—

Tied to the tentacle before her.

Tied to the tentacle that she is papping, shooshing.

Like the moirail she is.

Mom’s been a little ANTSY because she remembers DYING!

It was very traumatic for her!

(You can’t help but be a little jealous.)

(It is the most beautiful moirallegiance you have ever seen.)

(Eridan never had a chance.)

_Pap pap._

_Shoosh shoosh_.

Gl’b ijl’l nkj, Gl’bgolyb whispers in a horrible psychic whisper that has your eyes beading up with yellow blood, and Feferi shooshes her again.

 

The drones come for Feferi, too.

Down on the ocean floor, rebreathers strapped to their half-metal faces.

(Yellow threads hanging loose from their chests—)

(Their doom cut away from them.)

(Stolen.)

You kill them, together.

(Gl’bgolyb wipes half of them out with a single swipe of her horrible, toothy tentacle.)

(Aw, thanks mom!)

 

Feferi takes you back to her hive.

She has one room, airified.

It is almost larger than your entire hive—

And it is one massive pile.

(A massive pile for a troll that is not you—)

(That liked wands and treasures and guns.)

It works, just the same.

You and Feferi cry together, staining the squiddles and cuttlefish plushes that make up her half of the pile yellow and tyrian.

(When you are with her, in her arms, the strings that bind you both tangle together—)

(And you can move, just a little freer.)

 

Feferi airifies her roof, and you drag your lusus down from the ocean surface where you left him chained to a tree.

You spend your time in the pile room with a borrowed husktop, trying to hack The Condesce out of her own messaging system.

(You will never succeed.)

(You will do worse than fail.)

(You can feel it, at the start.)

(But what can you do but try?)

 

Feferi airifies more of her hive, has her horrorterror of a lusus expand it, until it is a veritable palace, beneath the sea.

(Larger than a palace, and then larger still.)

You don’t ask her why, but you can see her straining against her destiny—

And you know why.

 

When she goes to the surface, she takes you with her.

(You let her because you know your hacking is futile, from the start.)

Claw in claw, you walk along the beach, occasionally murdering drones—

Engaging in your paler desires.

(Your flushed desires you consummate just fine in the privacy of Feferi’s now cavernous hive.)

 

On your third visit to the surface, you encounter another troll for the first time.

He is a blue blood, and he twists his lips in a sneer at you until his eyes fall on Feferi’s sign, and he blanches.

He runs for his life—

(The blue string in his chest leading him forward, forward—)

(Into the doom awaiting him.)

(A culling for losing his lusus.)

You don’t follow him.

(You can’t.)

Feferi smiles at you—

(Her smile like stained glass, split by a thousand tyrian strings—)

And kisses your overgrown fangs.

 

On your fifth visit to the surface, you encounter a dying troll for the first time.

Indigo blood spreads all around the forest floor around her, her white facepaint smeared mostly away.

She is trying to laugh, but she is crying, instead.

Thick indigo tears streaking down her cheeks.

The indigo thread leading from her chest wavering, fraying.

You can hear her final cry, already.

You are going to walk past her, leave her.

Feferi will walk past her with you.

She will cry, later.

You can hear it in the chorus of the strings tied all around her, except—

 

Except Feferi stops.

She stops, and she strains against her own fate.

The string pull at her, and pull at her, and pull at her—

But she doesn’t move.

What’s your name? she asks, through the strings trying to hold her jaw shut.

The indigoblood stops crying, turns towards you.

The indigo thread from her chest thrums, twists—

polika

POLIKA MOTHERFUCKING NAIKEL

There is a moment of silence, broken only by the sound of thread, pulled tight, to it’s breaking point and then—

 _Snap_.

Feferi takes a step forward.

 _Snap_.

And then another.

 _Snap_.

And then another.

She stands over the indigoblood, staring up at her with wide yellow eyes.

The air is filled with keening again, and—

_Snap snap snap_

Feferi kneels in the pool of indigo at her feet.

I’m Feferi P-----EIX----ES.

IT’S SO NICE TO M---E---ET YOU!

Polika does not respond, as Feferi places her hand ( _snap snap snap_ ) on Polika’s stomach.

Who hurt you, Polika? she asks.

a violet blood—

WHO DIDNT WANT TO HEAR THE MOTHERFUCKING—

She chokes off when Feferi’s fingers touch her side, coughing her indigo blood directly into Feferi’s face.

More indigo tears leak from her eyes.

didnt want to hear the word of our mirthful messiahs

Feferi glows jade through the tyrian strings binding her, and the indigo blood gasps.

(It is not in pain.)

It’s OKAY!

You’re fin now!

Polika stands, stares down at her hands.

She looks at Feferi, and then at you.

The indigo string in her chest no longer sings her death.

(It now leads her forward, and forward—)

(Until she one day will become—)

(The Reformed Justicar.)

From where she stands, she can’t see the bright pink stain in Feferi’s side.

I’m fine, Feferi lies to you, once the indigoblood is gone.

It’s already healed.

(You can see her face, clearer than you ever have, before.)

(But you could see her shoulders shake as pink bloomed beneath her wetsuit.)

(And you have never pitied her more.)

(Where in the strings binding her had once sung a single, clean melody of her death, they now sing in disharmony.)

 

You talk to Aradia, over Trollian.

(AA: i found the best ruins today!)

(AA: look at all these corpses i found!)

Talk as filthy as you fucking can.

(AA: i miss you)

(TA: ii mii55 you too)

(AA: come see me)

(TA: soon)

(TA: iive almo5t got iit)

You don’t, though.

(You never will.)

(You visit her, anyways.)

 

karkats still alive! she says, as an afterthought, and—

The world gets a little bit, brighter.

You start looking for him, as quietly as you can.

You’ll find him, before The Condesce does.

(You won’t.)

 

When you walk with Feferi, trolls start to come to you.

(Feferi wears a new, different wetsuit.)

(One that her tyrian blood does not show through.)

With each troll that comes before her, more strings snap off of Feferi’s wrists, her fingers, her face.

(The two strings on her pinkies hold true.)

Sometimes, trolls with long gashes on their faces come before her, garbling through broken lips (some unable to garble at all, no tongues to speak)—

And she turns their back on them, before she glows with life’s jade.

She turns their back on them—

Turns to you.

You see her face split with a gash of a subjuggulator’s blades, her teeth break, her tongue vanish from her mouth.

(You see her skin knit itself closed, wriggling like a cuttlefish, her teeth regrow themselves, her tongue regrow itself in her mouth.)

She cries, sometimes.

Tyrian tears catching on tyrian strings that are a little sparser, every day.

(It )(URTS, she tells you, sometimes, when they’ve left.)

(turn them away, you say.)

(I can’t! I can help them!)

 

Some of the trolls Feferi heals—

Don’t leave.

(Can’t leave.)

Feferi builds a new hive, on the beach.

Big, palacial, cavernous.

(Gl’bgolyb knits it to the hive on the ocean floor with a long, dark tunnel you walk, sometimes, after a daymare.)

 

Then comes The Day.

(The Glubbing Day, as it will one day be called.)

You are with Feferi, on a pile of broken husktops and loose string, engaging in your more flushed impulses, when The Great Glub rocks through you.

Sollux!

Sollux, no!

(She is with you, and not with anyone else.)

(You would have come back, even though you don’t know it at the time.)

(How many died, because of you?)

(How many rustbloods, how many brownbloods—)

(Who died before Feferi could reach them?)

Her grey eyes weep her own tyrian blood.

Your eyes break, and you are momentarily blind, until you are staring at Feferi’s face, her sockets empty—

You are bleeding from your everything, and then she is.

It lasts three minutes, but it feels longer than that—

(Seeing your moirailsprit take punishment meant for you.)

 

When Feferi leaves for the surface, you don’t follow her.

You stay where you are, on the pile stained yellow and tyrian.

You strain against the yellow strings that bind you, but it is futile.

You lay there, like the worthless sack of blood you are.

(Above you, your lusus has survived because he’s as psy null as a bag of hammers.)

 

There is a pop, behind you.

Soft, like the sound of a troll papping their moirail.

You turn, and find The Demoness standing behind you, her teeth bared—

A very familiar whip curled around her horns, pulling her back, away from you.

(The Demoness is bound like no one you have ever seen.)

(Her threads are green, and not red.)

(And they all shake with a flavor of doom you haven’t seen since the game ended.)

She vanishes with a pop, and the adult who had been fighting her smiles at you.

There is a maroon string leading from her chest.

(A maroon string you know by heart, singing a death you know better than anyone’s.)

AA? you ask.

oh, sollux, the adult says and you know that tone, even if you don’t know the voice.

She comes towards, sits beside you on you and Feferi’s pile.

She touches your face, the hard chitin of her hands uncomfortable, unfamiliar against your skin.

this was the glub

wasn’t it?

oh, sollux

She paps you and shooshes you and it’s all wrong—

It’s not your Aradia’s hands, it’s all too hard, but—

But you cry into her chest, all the same.

She stays with you, until your trollian lights up.

sollux

i need feferis help

Before you can answer, the adult takes your chumproll from you, and types out your response.

She waits, for a long second, and then types out another.

She hands it back to you.

in half a perigee, it says.

howd you surviive, you ask her.

i didnt!

but dont worry!

i got better

She kisses you, on the forehead, the cheeks, the fangs, and then the lips.

You are almost used to the hard chitin of her skin before she drifts away from you, (bye!) and pops away, chasing after The Demoness, once more.

 

Aradia, when you find her after the glub, after the adult Aradia has passed back past you, back to her future, is…

Not okay.

She is not even 0kay.

(She no longer dances with the maroon string in her chest.)

(It pulls at her, dragging her from one moment to the next.)

(Ever closer to her impending doom.)

She is running corpsefires, dawn ‘til dusks, and she smiles.

Her smiles are wide and brilliant and maroon, and, for the first time—

Her smiles are fake.

 

You try and comfort her, try to shoosh her, pap her—

But she kisses you, instead.

itll be fine! she says, afterwards, and her voice is strained.

(The maroon string in her chest lies slack, singing the song of her doom.)

itll be fine! she repeats, and her smile is fake.

 

(Feferi is in tatters.)

(There are so many dead.)

(So many dying.)

(So many permanently crippled.)

(She can barely see straight, barely walk straight.)

(Every step she takes breaks more pink strands from her wrists, knees—)

(Every step is a little lighter than the one before it.)

(She lets you shoosh her, but your hands shake so badly you barely can.)

(When you inevitably cry, like the useless wiggler you are, she shooshes you, instead.)

 

A week passes, and Feferi starts coming back to her hive to sleep.

Two weeks, and the dying stop coming.

Two more weeks, and Aradia’s lusus is healed, and she is flying away.

(Her smile is still fake, her eyes still a little bit broken.)

 

The survivors of the broken city that cannot stand the blood that will never be clean from its walls (the _rainbow city_ , it will forevermore be known)—

Come to you.

Well, Feferi.

Her enormous hive gets a little bit bigger.

(The )(eiress, they call her, in whispered tones.)

(The Condesce, reborn.)

(They call her some other things, too—)

(Things a little before their time.)

 

After it is all over, Feferi vanishes, for an afternoon.

She comes back, sopping wet for the first time in weeks—

Her grey eyes just a little bit broken.

She didn’t even—

She didn’t even care.

You hold her, while she cries.

(From her left pinkie, the string that had always been the brightest of whites, pulled tight—)

(Is cut.)

 

Vriska comes, later.

(Striding defiantly, like she is doing anything other than following where the cerulean strand tied to her sternum is pulling her.)

Where’s Travros’s 8ody? she asks.

What?

Where’s Tavros’s 8ody?

From her left pinkie hangs a red string, trailing off into the distance.

Tattered, ripped, almost colorless with wear.

(Almost, but not quite.)

You don’t have an answer for her.

As she leaves Feferi’s not-throne room, she stops, near the door.

I’m going to kill her, Vriska says.

Whatever it takes.

She isn’t asking permission.

From her right pinkie hangs a bright red (candy-red) string, leading nowhere.

Cut, cleanly.

Its edges not yet frayed.

 

Kanaya never comes.

You never see her.

You never even knew she was so close.

(You should have.)

(You should have—)

(What?)

(Reached out?)

(That wouldn’t have changed anything.)

 

You settle into the new normal.

Living in Feferi’s pseudo-castle, on the sea.

Standing by her side as she grits her teeth and bares pain that is not her own.

(That she should not have to bear.)

Culling drones stop coming.

You let yourself think that is because The Condesce has given up.

(You are wrong.)

 

Two perigees later, several things happen in very rapid succession:

 

You troll Aradia, and she doesn’t respond.

(TA: AA you there?)

(TA: ii cant feel you AA)

(TA: where are you?)

 

Your Trollian stops responding to your keystrokes—starts opening windows on its own.

(TA: can you still do your space-y thing?)

(TA: they wanna put me in a ship kan)

(TA: plz help)

(DFTTAINM: plea5e KY)

(DFTTAINM: dont fall for iit, plea5e)

 

A transport ship sets itself down outside Feferi’s palace-hive, its doors open, and an adult threshecutioner squad pours out from within it.

(Ten yellowbloods.)

(Five rustbloods.)

(Six ceruleanbloods.)

(Two indigobloods.)

(Trolls fall, screaming, and Feferi, at your side, screams with them, as their wounds open on her skin in their place.)

(You won’t forget the way she screams for the rest of your unfortunately endless life.)

 

Then, finally, from half a galaxy away, you feel a blast of psiioniics like the big bang—

(Like the Great Glub.)

And, beside it, you finally find Aradia’s psiioniic signature.

no, you say.

plea5e

The yellow strings around you tie you down to Feferi’s side, where you belong.

(Where you will belong, until she draws her last breath, and you will be passed off, locked up—)

Aradia will die, alone, in the cold vacuum of space, and you will not even be able to say goodbye.

You know it in your bones, you can hear it sung to you in the chorus of the imminently dead—

A chorus that once again is made up primarily of Aradia’s voice.

 

no, you say.

For the first time, in your miserable existence, you disobey.

no

You leave them all behind.

Kanaya, walking into The Condesce’s trap.

Feferi, dying a hundred deaths.

Everyone else in your hive, all doomed to die at the threshecutioner’s hands.

Yellow strings strain and try and hold you back, but you are the MAGE of DOOM, and they have no power over you.

They do not break, they do not snap, they retie themselves, reorient themselves, dragging you forward—

Up, up, up some more.

You go straight up, through the ceiling of Feferi’s respiteblock—

There’s no one above you no one vaporized by the blast of your psiioniics that vaporizes most of her roof, but you sure as fuck didn’t bother to check.

You scream through the atmosphere, leaving a column of searing plasma behind you as you.

Then you are in space, and you are _not fast enough_.

Your pan starts to run a little bit, yellow blood leaking from your blue and red eyes, but it isn’t enough.

You need to go faster, need to—

 

bye sollux, she says, still impossibly far away.

You won’t reach her in time. You have to—

5end me back

what? her voice is clouded, slurred.

AA, 5end me back

plea5e

Silence, as you go faster and faster and faster—

tell feferi to make her pay for me sollux, she says, each word slurred into the next.

AA!

It’s not enough.

no!

And, for the second time in your life, you feel Aradia’s psiioniics wink out of existence.

 

The strings of your own doom led you here.

(No further.)

Alone, in the vacuum of space, a hundred light years from home, two hundred light years from Aradia’s corpse.

The MAGE of DOOM—

Ha.

You laugh.

You laugh until you cry and you fucking scream.

The yellow strings wrapped all around you, tying you in place, and they hurt, like they never have before.

They cut into your skin hard enough it feels like you should bleed, you should see the angry yellow lines they leave on your skin.

But you don’t bleed.

Your skin is unblemished.

 

You knew she was going to die.

Since you saw her in that field of frozen culling drones.

Since you kissed her in a pile made of incestuous legislation and broken antique grubtops.

Every second you had been with her you had known this was waiting for her.

(You cannot stop crying.)

 

As you cry, the strings drag you forward.

Forward, forward, and further forward still.

You will take her body, and carry it back to Alternia.

(What did she do, to die a heroic death?)

You are no longer blasting towards it at full speed. No longer liquifying your pan for that last ounce of acceleration.

(No, you’ll be made to do that later.)

(You are The Helmsman, reborn.)

 

One hundred light years—

Fifty light years.

Ten.

Five.

Two.

 

You remember, what Aradia told you, in the sweeps you were hidden in the veil together.

(Between the times in which Aradia auspitized for all the damn ghosts in the dream bubbles.)

you cant change what youve already seen

but as long as you make sure to not see it then theres always a chance!

You stop.

(You are one light year away.)

Aradia may be dead ( _not yet_ ), but there is one time player left.

You turn around.

 

You open Trollian.

DFTTAINM: TZ

DFTTAINM: ii need you two fiind the demone55

 

Silence.

You are two hundred light years from Alternia.

One hundred and fifty.

 

GC: SOLLUX?

GC: 1S TH4T YOU?

DFTTAINM: the condesce hacked me

DFTTAINM: probably sent KN and KK to theiir deaths

GC: WH4T

DFTAAINM: ii cant fix that now

DFTAAINM: AAs dead

DFTAAINM: ii need your help to track down the demone55 to 5ave her

 

More silence.

You are a hundred light years from Alternia.

Fifty.

 

GC: wh4t

DFTAAINM: iif ii can use the demone55’5 time whatever5

DFTAAINM: ii can go back 5o ii can 5ave AA

DFTAAINM: ii need your help  two  find her

 

Twenty-five.

Ten.

Five.

Two.

One.

 

GC: OK4Y

GC: G1V3 M3 4 M1NUT3

 

As you enter the atmosphere, you pass a battleship, slowly falling from the sky.

It smells like death.

(Feels like death.)

Sounds like death.

But within it, you feel—

A single familiar presence.

(A ball of candy-red string, eternally struggling against that which he cannot change.)

You catch it in your psiioniics, guide it to the ground beside you.

(You cannot feel Kanaya’s white presence anywhere.)

 

When you set it down on the ground outside of Feferi’s empty shell of a hive, adult bodies scattered across the ground, two trolls step out of it.

Karkat, in a maroon hoodie, bright, candy-red wings behind him, and then—

Kanaya.

Kanaya, in a black hoodie, jade wings behind her.

(Kanaya’s string, which had been white since she died, and came back as a rainbow drinker—)

(Is jade again.)

(She had always walked, steps sure and self-confident, like she was leading it, and not the other way around.)

(She does not walk that way now.)

what

HEY SOLLUX.

WHEN THE GAME SHAT US BACK OUT IT APPARENTLY FUCKED UP AND SHAT US OUT GODTIER.

SURPRISE.

 

Feferi is still alive, laid out on your pile.

She’s mostly healed, except for her eyes.

They are so bloodshot she looks like she’s fucking molted.

)(ey, she says, her voice barely above a whisper.

hii

)(ow’s Aradia?

You sink to her side, and you don’t answer.

Oh no, she says, her voice full of pity, her hands on your face.—

I’m so sorry!

You shake her away.

you fought off the adults, you say instead.

She looks away.

It was mostly vriska, she lies, voice hoarse, like you hadn’t seen the threshecutioners blown apart by their own guns, subjuggulators’ heads caved in by their own clubs.

She shakes her head, tyrian tears slipping from beneath her eyes.

(She is more pitiful than she has ever been.)

 

GC: TOMORROW, MIDNIGHT

GC: 1N TROLL T14N4NM3N SQU4R3

 

You go.

With Karkat, for backup, because he insists.

(You should have brought everyone.)

(Gathered up all eleven of you, come down on her like the eleven gods you were.)

(You don’t, because you are destined to fail.)

You don’t succeed.

(You never will.)

You see her for only a second (a glowing ball of green thread), and then she’s gone.

(Before she leaves, you see her black fingers twitch along her wands.)

(You hear them, spin, click.)

 

GC: N3XT TU3SD4Y

GC: H4LF P4ST TWO

GC: K4N4Y4S OLD H1V3

GC: 1N H3R M3ALBLOCK

 

You don’t catch her the second time, either.

(Just barely miss her.)

There is recognition in her green and red eyes when she looks at you, now.

(This time, you are close enough to see the person inside the ball of glowing green thread.)

(All of it quivering with the doom that only ever existed inside of the game.)

 

GC: TWO P3R1G33S FROM NOW

GC: H1GH NOON

GC: TH3 P4L4C3

GC: YOUR R3SP1T3BLOCK

 

There is a moment of silence.

 

GC: 1TS YOUR L4ST CH4NC3

 

(Reading it, you already know you will fail.)

 

You’re ready for her, this time.

The moment she appears, you blast her into the wall with your psiioniics—

You catch her hands before she can spin herself out of time—

Green and red on red and blue, and—

And—

You hesitate.

(She looks so much like Aradia.)

She has her face, her cheekbones, her nose, her blunt, herbivore teeth.

(Her psiioniics are _Aradia’s psiioniics_.)

Everything about her screams Aradia to every sense you have, and some senses you don’t.

(Your head is caught up in so much bright green thread, and you can almost see Doc Scratch’s white text, taunting you.)

(Leading you astray.)

She struggles, and there is fear in her face—

And God

In that moment, she looks so much like Aradia you can’t help but—

aradiia

(Spelling her name out, for the first time in years.)

Your grip loosens, she slips from your grasp, and she is gone.

(Aradia is dead.)

(There is nothing you could have ever done to stop it.)

(You are MAGE of DOOM, and no one knows the inevitability of doom better than you.)

 

Your trollian rings.

 

GC: 1M SORRY SOLLUX

GC: TH3R3 1S NOTH1NG YOU COULD H4V3 DON3

 

You crumble.

You scream.

You scream and you scream and you scream.

You try and rip and tear at the strings in your skin, dig them out of you—

But you can do nothing but rend your own flesh, because the strings are directing your _every movement_.

 

You molt, right there, on the ground, in a small pool of your own blood.

Feferi finds you, curled up and still screaming, still trying to rip yourself apart.

The skin of her hands are soft against your hardening skin, as damp and as cold as they always are.

For the first time, it doesn’t help.

 

When you have returned to yourself, your respiteblock is a smoldering ruin.

(You don’t remember destroying it.)

Your hivetop is broken—

(All of that work, which had been guaranteed to never bear fruit—)

(Gone, just like that.)

The piles you and Feferi had built, charred beyond recognition—

(You are lying on the cold, hard ground.)

The picture of you and Aradia, from before she died the first time—

(The picture of you and Karkat, the one time you met in person before the game—)

(The picture of you and Feferi, just after she was done papping her lusus—)

Nothing more than ash.

 

Feferi is still by your side, her hands not just soft, but small.

(A child’s hands.)

She looks up at you, for the first time, and behind her goggles, there is a flicker of fear in her eyes.

 

That morning, Feferi takes you to her respiteblock.

(Drained, somehow.)

You’ve never been in it before.

Feferi’s hive has always been big enough she had whole rooms dedicated to the two of you.

(A papping room.)

(A sloppy makeout room.)

You sleep with her in her recuperacoon, which wouldn’t have been big enough when you were both juveniles.

You stuff yourselves into it, anyways.

 

It takes you a perigee to notice them.

A perigee in which your lusus, still chained to the top of Feferi’s hive, tries, unsuccessfully, to throw himself into the ocean.

In which the adult threshecutioner raids don’t stop happening.

They don’t distract you, because you don’t care.

You don’t have an excuse for how long it took you to see what was right in front of your eyes.

(They are not hidden—)

(They are in a display case, for the whole world to see.)

 

When you notice them, it is the middle of the night, and Feferi is culling the revolution like the cuttlefish she can no longer keep in her room because she now shares it with you.

You are alone.

 

you never needed my help diid you, you say to the Demoness’s wands, inexplicably displayed on Feferi’s wall before you.

you had iit all under control

You can almost hear the sound of Aradia’s laughing.

 

The yellow strings that direct your every movement direct you away from them—

Like you never saw them.

But, for the second time in your life, you resist.

(This time, they can’t deceive you.)

(Before you is incontrovertible evidence Aradia will survive.)

For the second time in your life, the yellow strings all around you retie themselves to your new destiny.

(You are MAGE of DOOM.)

 

When Feferi returns to her respiteblock and sees the wands in your hands—

You see The Condesce in her, for the first time.

The look she gives you is filled with hate that is black like the outer ring—

A look that promises suffering beyond measure.

Sollux, she says, and her voice is perfectly level.

What are you doing with Dualgaze’s wands?

 

(I met her when I was a wiggler, she tells you, after she is no longer looking at you like she wants to throw you in a black hole.)

(She was a rustblood, she says.)

(With the BIGG-EST ram horns.)

(She never showed me her sign.)

(There is an ocean behind each of her words, unsaid.)

 

You don’t ask for her permission to take the wands, and she doesn’t give it.

Come back, she says.

ii wiill, you say.

(You can’t not.)

(Your fate still waits for you here.)

(You are The Helmsman, reborn.)

You spin the wheels in the handle of the wands, and the world blurs around you.

 

When it stops, an adult Aradia is standing before you.

hi sollux! she says.

You want to laugh, because you were right.

Of course you were right.

You never doubted it.

(Never.)

You cry, instead.

aww, Aradia says, wiping your face.

don’t cry sollux!

you look so pitiful when you cry

She takes your face in her claws—

i wont be able to help myself!

 

She takes the wands from you, some time later.

wait here! she says, and vanishes.

You are on a balcony, overlooking a garden, and then a forest beyond that.

In the garden, you see Feferi, fifteen feet of glorious black chitin only barely restrained by a wetsuit, and a skirt of every color of the rainbow, with a head of black hair overflowing her everything.

(You wish she would get more than a day of it.)

Beside her is you.

They are painting a thin gold cord winding its way around Feferi’s 2x3dent.

(Between them are twelve tiny little bottles, one for each color of the hemospectrum.)

You look up, to the night sky.

It is eleven sweeps in the future.

It is five hours before Feferi will face The Condesce.

(The mass of pink strings around Feferi are thinner than you have ever seen them—)

(But they still her doom in harmony.)

(She is more pitiful than she has ever been.)

 

There is a pop from behind you, and you turn away from Feferi.

(Away from your future self.)

 _tell me sollux_ , Aradia says to you.

_was my death heroic?_

_was it just?_

In her arms, lies her own corpse, a gear slowly spinning over its form, the maroon string from its chest frozen, mid-thrum.

(It is on its last tock.)

yes! the string screams.

i died for The Helmsman!

i died so he could taste freedom one last time !

(Is that what she did?)

(Is that what she died for?)

(Of course it was.)

You raise your gaze to hers, and she smiles at you, rust eyes dancing.

no, you say.

no?

no, you repeat, and this time, when the word leaves your lips, the world shatters around it.

When it comes back together, it is not the same as it was.

Aradia is smiling wider, every last one of her blunt herbivore teeth on display.

my beautiful heretiic, she says, and she lunges to kiss you over her own corpse—

The gear that had been slowly spinning on its chest gone.

The maroon string dangling from the dead Aradia’s chest tocks one last time, and then it does not fall limp.

 

Aradia releases you, and her corpse dissolves into static before lifting itself into the air, and reforming itself.

Your Aradia unfurls from the static, and she raises her voice to the sky in a bright, happy laugh.

it is so good to be alive!

She looks down at you, all of her teeth on display.

i never doubted you!

 

You return to the present, although you wanted to stay, just a little bit longer.

(You want to steal just a couple more minutes of that adult Feferi, because you know your time with her is limited.)

dont forget who you are, the other Aradia says to you—

Smiling, with all of her herbivore teeth.

(You are The Helmsman, reborn.)

 

You return Feferi’s wands to her, and she doesn’t relax, until they are back in their case.

Welcome back, Aradia! she says, only after they are locked away.

I’m so happy to see you again!

 

Aradia stays in the palace.

why?

i missed you of course!

Her eyes dance in the way they dance when she’s lying to you, and she knows you know it.

(You need her, near you.)

(Just for a little while.)

(Or you think you might go crazy.)

 

It is three pergiees after Aradia has returned when it happens.

When something changes.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this, but it is happening anyways.

Fate, reforged.

 

It is only after you hear them, all thousand (ten thousand, one hundred thousand) deaths, sung in it's false harmony, broken falsetto, that you feel it.

The psiioniic battery of a battleship.

(A battleship—the kind of ship that can slag planets from orbit.)

Only her imperious battleship can run on one psiioniic.

This battleship runs on forty-two.

(Rotated out every other year, the old helmsmen vented into space.)

 

And it is coming for you.

(It is coming for you, and you don't have anything that can stop it.)

(It could slag the palace from space.)

(It _will_ slag the palace from space.)

All you've got is an empty battleship with a dead helmsman.

(You are The Helmsman, reborn.)

 

The yellow string that is when into your skin tells you to stay put.

Lay there, with Aradia, until the battleship is on top of you.

Your death will not be just.

It will not be heroic.

You will come back.

(Your deaths will never be allowed to be just, or heroic.)

(You will never die.)

 

Aradia will come back, too.

(Her lusus will not.)

(Neither will anyone else.)

(She will run, you will not see her again.)

 

Feferi won’t even die.

She will try to keep everyone alive.

She will try to take all of their wounds onto herself.

She will fail, but only after snapping herself in half in the process.

You will be with her, until the end.

Until—

 

You are tied here, your lips sewn shut.

This is how it must happen.

This is how it will all end.

 

> Sollux: Wait For It

 

no

 

You've done this before.

You look at Aradia, and she smiles at you.

You've done this before.

You can do it again.

You are Sollux Captor, MAGE of DOOM.

(You are The Helmsman, reborn.)

 

The yellow strings all around you shift.

The screaming of the doomed falls silent.

Aradia blinks, like she noticed.

(She probably did.)

 

sollux, she starts.

iim 5orry AA, you say, and then her eyes flare briefly with your psiioniics, and she falls limp.

(Aradia's mind may have been a fortress, but she had always left a side entrance for you.)

(You can't imagine she'll make the same mistake again.)

You stand from your shared pile.

You have five hours.

It will take you two.

 

No

yes

No

yes

No

ii order you two in5tall me iinto that battle5hip

Equius grits his teeth.

He perspires heavily.

(He strains futilely against the single blue thread holding him in place.)

He acquiesces.

 

You go to find Feferi.

You tell her that there is a ship coming.

She takes you to a saferoom, reinforced steel not even a hit squad could break through.

You see her face, when she realizes what needs to be done.

 

Sollux, no.

iim 5orry FF

Feferi is immune to your psiioniics.

(Her mind is not a fortress, it's a fucking volcano.)

(There is nothing that can be compromised, no backdoor.)

(It's molten rock, all the way down.)

The world around her, however, is not.

Let me out!

The metal of the door you seal shut behind you dents under her fist.

Sollux if you do this I swear I will—

 

Equius's eyes are blue-rimmed, like he's been crying.

Like he's been punching himself in the face.

iis iit ready?

Yes

 

As he stitches you into the ship, blue tears well in his yellow eyes.

His sweaty hands shake.

With each tentacle, with your every scream, they shake a little more.

He only manages to get you halfway into the helm, before he crumples at your feet.

You have to complete the rest of the helmsing yourself.

 

It hurts.

More than you thought would.

More than you could have imagined it would.

(Even when you open your eyes, and you are half a mile of cold hard steel.)

It's wrong and horrible and it is what you have been waiting your entire life to become.

 

You meet the battleship just outside of geosynchronous orbit.

They aren't prepared to meet you—to meet an equal, and you get three solid shots off before they can respond.

But there are forty three of them and only one of you.

(Half of you, because you cannot forget the tentacles squirming under your skin—)

(You cannot forget crumpled form, before you, his head in his hands, silently weeping.)

 

It is hard.

They are many, you are few.

But ultimately, it doesn't matter.

You are The Helmsman, reborn, and they are not.

You were born to fly the imperial battleship alone, once your ancestor finally expired.

You are down to only one tine when their ship tilts, and their shots start going wild.

The battle is won.

 

So it is of course then that The Condesce arrives.

No one has seen her in over a sweep, fifteen feet of black chitin stuffed into a wetsuit and a too-colorful skirt, with a horrorterror of hair stapled to the back of her head.

She comes crashing down on the other ship, first.

Punishes it for its failure.

She blows it apart with _your_ psiioniics—

Vaporizing its bridge in a red and blue blast.

(Like even you were unable to do.)

You are reminded that The Condesce did not need your ancestor—

She just had him anyways.

It spirals, out into space, away from Alternia—

Belching black smoke and dead trolls into space.

 

Then she comes for you.

You try to shoot her out of the sky, but your sign flickers on her head, but she blasts your psiioniics into the moon, shoots down your guns.

She crashes into the hull, and begins to rip her way down to you.

She misses you, by about thirty feet, so she comes in through the door, ripping it open.

 

The door explodes in, and her bright, tyrian eyes fall upon you.

There is a black fury in her gaze.

(Split a thousand ways by the tyrian threads tied through her everything.)

A hate that is anything but romantic.

You cannot fight her, your psiioniics diverted through the tentacles in your everything into the ship's systems.

 

This is how it was always going to end.

(At least she spares the palace.)

Aradia killed her helmsman, so she has come for a replacement.

 

> Sollux: Be The Helmsman, Reborn.

 

No, The Condesce says.

 

She walks towards you, each step tearing another tyrian string from her skin.

(The sound of the strings breaking in a melody you know by heart.)

She steps over Equius, and she is in your face, her enormous mouth cut into a snarl.

She grabs you by the shirt, pulls you towards her.

(Hard enough a tentacle or two slips from beneath you skin with an agonizing pop.)

Right up to her tyrian goggles, and her plain gold tiara.

 

You are my BELOV-ED )(ERETIC, Feferi says.

She rips you from the helmsblock, and the wounds the tentacles rip in your skin appear on her skin, instead.

The wounds that would have killed you heal on her, instead.

AND YOU WILL N--EV--ER BE ANYONE’S )(--ELMSMAN.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: heretic is eight letters in both Sollux and Feferi's quirk.


End file.
